


Carina

by CelestialSilences



Series: Equinox [2]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe- District 9, Alternate Universe- Stray Kids Canonverse, Alternative Universe- Soldiers, Badass Battle Husbands(TM), Chan adores his members and his members adore him, Devotion, Dystopia, Emotional Intimacy, Everyone Is Gay, Jae (Day6), Just like in real life :), Love, M/M, Mentioned GOT7 Ensemble, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Not by choice of any of the characters though, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Polyamory, Seriously so much of that, Violence, poly ot8 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:20:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestialSilences/pseuds/CelestialSilences
Summary: The soldiers of Unit Nine are the best of the best- no mission is too difficult, no command unfollowable. They serve their cause with unmatched levels of loyalty and excellence....Until they don't. Finally freed for their horrific past of constant brainwashing and terror, the members of Unit Nine set out into the dangerous, unfamiliar country of Clé to create themselves anew- and maybe end up remaking the entire world in the process.(Or, the story of how eight former living weapons fall in love, work to take down a government, and take the phrase "be gay, do crime," a little too much to heart)(As of 9/19/20, this fic is now ot8!!)
Relationships: Bang Chan/Everyone, Bang Chan/Han Jisung/Hwang Hyunjin/Kim Seungmin/Lee Felix/Lee Minho/Seo Changbin/Yang Jeongin, Everyone/Everyone, Han Jisung | Han/Everyone, Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Hwang Hyunjin/Everyone, Hwang Hyunjin/Seo Changbin, Kim Seungmin/Everyone, Lee Felix (Stray Kids)/Everyone, Lee Minho | Lee Know/Everyone, OT8 - Relationship, Poly OT8, Seo Changbin/Everyone, Stray Kids Ensemble/Everyone, Stray Kids Ensemble/Stray Kids Ensemble, Yang Jeongin | I.N/Everyone
Series: Equinox [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586590
Comments: 63
Kudos: 216





	1. Blue Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the frosty silence between missions, Chan waits, hoping against hope for something to change.
> 
>  _No more,_ he decides. 
> 
> (Blue moon, n.- A phrase used to describe an exceedingly rare event, typically one that occurs only after a long period of time.
> 
> _"Once in a blue moon")_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! This work is a sequel, so you should go read [Antumbra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22042288) first to understand what's going on. Enjoy <3

Chan doesn't sleep very often. 

Partially because he doesn’t need to -a perk of being something not quite human, and one he can’t complain about- but mainly because he can’t, even when he should be. Exhaustion can weigh down his body until his veins feel like they’re pumping lead instead of blood, until his mind is more of a foggy haze of incoherent thoughts than a consciousness, and _still_ he won’t fall asleep. There’s always something to think about, something to plan, something to do.

And, more so than anything else, there's always, always someone to miss. 

More often than not that’s why he ends up here, outside the cryo storage facilities. He inclines his head to tonight’s guard, Jihyo, and she offers a curt smile. 

“Here again?” she asks, tone conversational, but he knows she’ll be reporting every word he says to her superiors later. It’s not personal; if Chan were in her place, he’d have to be doing the exact same thing. 

“The cold helps me focus,” he replies lightly. 

(It’s a massive lie- Chan can’t stand the cold.)

Jihyo shakes her head at him almost in disbelief, but she presses her wrist to the scanner below the door anyway and lets the biometrics do their work. “You’re weird, Bang Chan.”

He smiles at her, hopes it isn’t too plastic-looking. “Aren’t we all.” 

The moment the door hisses shut behind him, the ice-cold air of the cryo chamber immediately leaching into his bones and making him shiver, Chan relaxes. He’s not fully at ease, not with the ever-active cameras still tracking his every movement, but even just being near his teammates makes every nerve in his body sing with quiet anticipation. 

Before he can fully get to work, though, there’s something he has to do. Chan moves to sit against a wall, letting his back bump against it and sliding to the floor. He stretches his legs out, gets comfortable, tries to show in every capacity that he’s here to work for the long haul. Reaching into the pocket of his standard-issue jacket, Chan does two things- he finds a small device in his pocket and presses a button on it, and when he’s sure it’s clicked into place he pulls out his tablet and boots it up, letting its holographic screen spring to life in front of him. 

Chan very carefully avoids looking at the right side of the room where the camera sits, forever recording every move he makes. It won’t be an issue for much longer. He shifts his position a little bit, and the disruptor he'd activated earlier falls just enough out of his pocket that he can glimpse the glow of its red light blinking at him. 

Chan waits anxiously for the thirty seconds he needs to, tapping random things into his tablet and pretending to be focused intently on work. In actuality, he finished everything he needed to for the day a few hours ago, but he’ll submit a few things just before he goes to bed to throw off anyone who might be looking into him and his activities. 

Finally, in the corner of his eye, the light on the disruptor turns green. He’s safe.

Chan still waits ten extra seconds, unwilling to move until he’s absolutely sure everything is fine, but the second he deems everything okay he tosses his tablet aside -it’s mostly holographic, it’ll be fine- and stands up. 

He sits in a different spot in the room every time he does this. Tonight, he’s not far from the door, almost directly in front of the first cryo cell in the row of tubes that hold the members of Unit Nine. 

Jisung sleeps there, and through the tiny window of the cell Chan can see the faintest silhouette of a face and a few strands of dark hair. He’s beautiful even like this, form mostly blurred and unconscious, the sum total of his existence currently held entirely within Chan’s memories. 

“Hi,” he whispers, the faintest ghost of a smile on his lips. In his mind, he sees Jisung’s answering grin, can practically hear his teammate greet him brightly, warm eyes filled with nothing but energy and affection. 

After taking a second to let his eyes drink their fill of Jisung’s sleeping form, he moves to the next cryo pod. Chan greets Changbin next, tries to force away the thoughts of dark eyes made glassy and dead by District conditioning that spring to the forefront of his mind. Instead, he focuses on the way Changbin smiles at his teammates in the morning, the glint in his eyes when he cracks a joke, the way he looks curled up next to Felix at night. Changbin is so much more than the District’s conditioning- Chan wants so desperately to see the real him more, to be able to properly appreciate the wonderful person his teammate is when his mind isn’t being ravaged by drugs and brainwashing. It’s a nice thought, but an impossible one. 

With one last glance at Changbin, Chan moves on. He goes from chamber to chamber quietly, almost reverently, and commits every glimpse of his teammates to memory as best as he can, letting memories wash over him and fill his heart with the closest thing he can feel to warmth when he’s alone like this. 

While Chan may not lose his memories every couple of months like the rest of his unit, everything in his mind is as vulnerable to the unforgiving jaws of time as it is for them. He needs to keep their existences safe inside of his mind no matter what. While his unite does a wonderful job of stubbornly finding themselves again and again regardless of the conditioning they’ve been put through, it’s still a constant fear of Chan’s that they might someday lose that perpetual battle, and he needs to be able to help put them back together if it ever happens. 

He pauses for an extra long moment in front of Seungmin’s cell, quietly grieving for his teammate. He’s suffering from an affliction Chan can’t even begin to solve, and even the mere sight of him makes his heart ache with sorrow, fills him with a frustrated sort of helplessness that burns like acid in his veins. 

Memory wipes don’t work very well on Seungmin- he’s got an eidetic memory, so things tend to stick in his head a little too well. On missions it’s an invaluable asset, but the rest of the time not so much, not when he’s a part of one of the most clandestine government agencies in existence. 

To stop any potential problems before they started, the District decided to up the dosage of memory-erasing drugs he receives after every mission. It works in the short-term, although Seungmin is always the slowest to wake up from cryo, but it’s got some nasty side effects. 

The drugs, never intended to be used in such high doses and so frequently, are destroying his mind slowly. Medically, it’s damaging the ability of his hippocampus to form and retain most long-term memories, meaning that with time he’ll lose even the things the District wants him to know- his job, what he knows of the compound, the names of his teammates. Put simply, his brain is gradually turning to mush. 

Chan would rather die than let that happen. The thought of Seungmin losing his smarts, his wit, even the way he smiles at his unit is entirely unthinkable. It’d be like getting a limb ripped off, like having part of his soul taken. 

He’s lucky, at least, that things aren’t too bad yet. Unit Nine hasn’t been used often lately, their specialization not in high demand, so while Seungmin’s mind isn’t exactly healing in cryo, at the very least it isn’t further deteriorating. 

With one last sad look at Seungmin’s cell, Chan moves on, greeting Jeongin and eventually circling back to stand in front of Jisung’s pod, close enough his nose is nearly brushing the glass. He doesn’t have much time left before lights-out, he knows, so soon he’ll have to say goodbye to his unit for another agonizing few days full of nothing but paperwork and memories for company. 

“I miss you,” Chan whispers, the feeling too immense to go unspoken. His voice cracks ever-so-slightly on the last syllable. 

Chan is aware, somewhere in the distant, deep part of his mind where he shoves unpleasant thoughts, that this is an objectively weird thing to do. There’s absolutely no way to rationalize him coming here every couple of days to talk to the inanimate bodies of his teammates. 

But Chan misses them so much it hurts, an actual, physical ache in his heart when they’ve been separated for too long, and seeing even their unconscious forms is the only thing that comes anywhere close to easing it. Memories of their smiles and laughs can only keep him warm at night for so long. 

He can’t sleep without them, either. His room in the Leader’s wing is too silent, too empty for him to ever feel comfortable, not when all he can think about after lights-out is his unit. 

_Units are lost without their leader_ , the District has always told him, an attempt to keep him poised, confident, always two steps ahead of everyone else. 

_Leaders are lost without their units_ , Chan knows, because though he may not be a soldier, he also exists to serve a purpose- to watch over Unit Nine, to try and give them as much of the joy and love they’ve so effortlessly brought him as he physically can. It’s not the objective given to him by the District, but Chan has still dedicated his entire life, his very being to his cause without a second thought. 

The longer he watches Jisung, the more memories spring up- some recent, some older, some a blended conglomerate of experiences that create something entirely new and completely fictional. 

“ _I’m going to forget this conversation, aren’t I?”_

_Chan swallows down the guilt that rises in his throat, threatening to cut off his airway and forcibly keep the lie from coming out. He pushes past it- this is far from the first time this has happened._

_“I can try to keep it from happening, but no guarantees.”_

_“Thank you.” A smile, bright and hopeful and so, so undeserved. The moment Jisung hugs him, Chan’s eyes close, forced shut by the guilt of making yet another unkeepable promise._

How many lies has Chan told his unit? How many promises has he broken, how many times has he let them down when they want for so little?

He’s a terrible leader, no matter what his unit may think. Unit Nine only knows what’s been fed into their brains, what few fragments of memories they’re lucky enough to keep. They don’t see Chan for what he really is- a liar. He promises again and again and again to protect them, to watch over them, to keep them safe from all harm, but he can’t save them from a single memory wipe, can’t even stop something as insignificant as a paper cut.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, palm coming to rest against the glass of Jisung’s cryo pod. 

It’s agonizingly far from actual physical contact, but it’s something, and though the window is icy cold and leeches the heat from his skin almost desperately, Chan still manages to pretend he’s holding Jisung’s hand instead of unyielding glass. 

“I love you,” he mouths, unable to speak the words aloud even alone with nothing but the hum of the cryo freezers to keep him company. 

He’s never told them. 

To varying extents, all seven of them understand the concept of love; that’s not what Chan is worried about. He’s seen Minho and Jisung and every other combination imaginable of his teammates fall for one another more than enough times to know they’re very much capable of experiencing romantic attraction. 

No, the fear Chan feels is deeper and infinitely more terrifying, grown from thick roots of insecurity and self-loathing instead of any form of logical concern. 

The nagging anxiety never really leaves him, even when his unit looks at him like he hung the stars- that all of the attention and affection they show him is nothing more than something they see as an expectation, merely a part of their roles as soldiers. That the way Chan loves them -wholly, completely, so much it’s a burning ache in his heart at the best of times- is entirely unreciprocated, just another way he’s a glitch in the District’s system. 

Chan sighs and lets his hand drop, feels beads of condensation snake their way down his hand and drip to the floor as he does. It’s almost lights-out, and he needs to get back to his dorm room before he starts to look even more suspicious. 

“I’ll see you soon,” he tells his unit, tries to make it sound like a promise. 

The only response he receives is the buzz of the cryo cells, and when Chan goes to sleep that night he feels almost like he’s the one frozen. 

The very next morning Chan is summoned by his superiors. He’s anxious the whole walk to the conference room he’s been called to, terrified they’ve somehow deduced that his trips to the cryo facilities aren’t as benign as they should be. 

But when Chan leaves twenty minutes later, it’s with a spring in his step and fresh orders for a mission in three days. It’s a ridiculously short time to plan, and the overview they’d given him of his expectations looked incredibly difficult, but Chan doesn’t care. He won’t sleep for the next few days if that’s what it takes to get everything done. 

All that matters is that it’s just three days -three!- until he gets to see his team again. Mentally, he’s already counting down the seconds until he gets the go-ahead to free his unit from their cells, until he can see their smiles and hear their voices and give them hugs again. He’s so excited it fills him up with white-hot nervous energy, and suddenly plans spring to the front of his mind, half-formed but a start, and he nearly skips back to his dorm room to start working. 

Three days pass both quickly and agonizingly slowly as Chan is caught up in equal amounts of both planning and daydreaming. For a handful of days he won’t be alone anymore, will get to refresh his months-out-of-date memories of his unit. It’s the closest thing to paradise in the District that Chan can imagine. 

He doesn’t sleep at all the night before Unit Nine is scheduled to be unfrozen, far too wired to even consider resting. To fill the time, he runs over his plans until he knows them better than his own name, tries to come up with and counteract every possible thing that might go wrong. 

When the next morning comes, he’s exhausted, but the thought of his unit drags him down to breakfast and into getting ready for the day, hands shaking almost violently from nervousness and excitement as he dresses. 

Still, he helps his teammates out of their pod with a perfectly steady grip, not letting any of them slip in the slightest despite his hold being loose and gentle. Their skin is icy cold, not yet fully unfrozen, but Chan can feel their heartbeats and see the glitter of his unit’s eyes again, and that alone is everything he could ever think to ask for. 

When they’re all freed from their cells and standing in front of him, Chan takes a moment to simply drink in the presence of his unit. They’re cold and disoriented and they’ve lost everything they gained from their last mission, but that’s okay- they’ll get it all back soon enough. They’re _here_ , with him again, and that’s all that matters. 

“Hi everyone,” Chan says, the same way he always does whenever a new mission begins, and it’s impossible to keep the smile off of his face. 

  
  


Chan feels like he might vomit. 

On most missions, keeping track of his monitors is all too easy- he needs to watch over his teammates, to protect them from any harm they can’t see coming. Sometimes his eyes even turn red and dry because he forgets to blink. The screens are a luxury, something he only has access to when the District bothers to hack into security systems and stoplight feeds for him, and he cherishes every second of live footage he gets. 

But right now? Chan would give just about anything to be able to shut the monitors off and look away. Although it’s always sickening to watch evaluations, seeing his teammates slaughter other units without knowledge or care of their true identities, this is far, far worse. 

They’re putting down a rebellion in sector 19, and it pains Chan almost physically to witness. This is one of the missions he’s glad will be wiped from his unit’s minds. It won’t be erased for him, though, no matter how much he might wish it was. He’ll carry the mental scars of what he’s seen today and a thousand other times for the rest of his life. 

He told his unit to be humane about it, to only kill if it was absolutely necessary, but he knows how much harder that can be in practice. When someone is coming at you with nothing but a black-market rifle and sheer desperation in their eyes, it can be understandably difficult to aim for a leg or arm instead of the chest. 

Almost transfixed by the violence on the screen in front of him, Chan watches his unit fight the rebellion. They’re outnumbered, but the insurgents are untrained and working with the kind of weapons that are just as likely to fire as they are to jam, so it’s really only a matter of time before their inevitable defeat. 

_Take no prisoners_ , the District had told him in his initial briefing, and it’s one of the few orders he can’t work around or subvert. Still, every rebel that falls makes something sharp twinge in Chan’s heart, almost like he’s the one being shot. 

He understands logically that even if he and his unit were nowhere near this particular situation that someone else would be doing the exact same thing, but that does nothing to assuage the guilt, the knowledge that he’s complicit in this horror. He’s the one who made these plans, who directs his unit in battle, and even if the orders don’t really come from him, well- the people being slaughtered don’t know that. To anyone outside of the van currently fighting for their life, Chan is no better than every District politician holed up in the center of the capital. 

Every time he does this, it gets harder and harder to convince himself they’re wrong. 

His unit doesn’t know any better than what they’re told, but Chan _does_. He knows everyone that’s going to die today is just an innocent trying to fight for the right to a better life against crushing oppression, people with spouses and friends and siblings who will weep when they’re gone. People whose lives will be unceremoniously squashed underfoot all in the name of conformity and progress. 

No one will cry for Chan when he inevitably dies, and he almost wishes he could trade his life for theirs. Cowardice and desperation are the only things that keep him rooted to his seat in the truck, unwilling to risk his unit or his chance to stay with them for as long as he can. He can’t tell which is more shameful- his inherent fear of death even under these circumstances, or his near-intrinsic need to stay as near to his teammates as he can, a small, icy planet in distant orbit around a star far too brilliant to be anything other than terrifyingly close to going supernova. 

There’s nothing he can do, nothing he ever does. There have been a thousand missions like this one and there will be a thousand more. 

So, for now, he watches the seven people he cares about most in the world commit atrocities they cannot possibly understand, and he grieves. 

They finish the job quickly enough; for what little it’s worth, the rebels don’t suffer before they die. His unit is not a not a bloodthirsty one, has none of the cruelty the District tries its best to breed into its soldiers. 

Chan had spent most of the mission foolishly focused on the insurgents, so he really has no idea how his unit fared. Minho tends to handle the bulk of missions like this, where decisions need to be made in real time and by someone who’s in the thick of the firefight. While the lack of focus is upsetting to Chan, who normally prides himself on his attentiveness, he more than trusts Minho to handle everything. The comms had been relatively clean too, simple callouts instead of panicked shouting or anything else that might be worrying. His report back to the District is a simple one: mission accomplished. 

The moment his unit is cleared to exit, Chan’s monitors shut off, an effort by the District to keep him from seeing as much of the outside world as can be managed. With the newfound darkness comes a startling emptiness in Chan’s mind, one that’s quickly filled with painfully clear images of all the worst things he’d seen today. He does his best to push them out of his mind, an effort made all too simple by the years of intimate practice he has with repression. This is hardly the worst thing he’s ever seen, anguish though it may be. 

Chan instead busies himself with his most common mental pastime- worrying about his unit. The sprint they’ll make back to the truck is one of the few times he won’t be in direct communication with them, and every single second is grating, allows a dozen more _what ifs_ to spring to the forefront of his mind. Mindful of the District camera in the corner of the truck, blinking to life as the van idles in preparation for Unit Nine’s imminent extraction, all Chan can do is try to regulate his breathing and keep his face perfectly blank. Symptoms of anxiety are a reconditionable offense, after all. 

After an excruciating wait, there’s a knock on the back door of the truck and the back door slides up to reveal Hyunjin, panting with exhaustion and running a weary hand through his sweat-soaked hair. He vaults into the truck with the lithe sort of elegance he somehow manages to put into everything he does and drops into one of the seats closest to Chan, shooting an adrenaline-loose grin his leader’s way. 

(It’s hard to imagine him killing anyone when he smiles like that.)

Something in Chan’s chest eases at the sight, and he smiles back reflexively. 

“Everyone else is coming?” he checks, voice even in an attempt to pass his anxiety off as merely following protocol. 

“Yes,” Hyunjin replies, wiping the sweat out of his eyes, and, as if summoned, Minho throws himself up into the truck, sliding along the metal floor on one thigh, twirling himself up with the other, and landing in a seat in the sort of motion that should be impossible to pull off but for Minho is all too simple. 

“Present,” is all Minho says, and before Chan can so much as swoon over what might be the most ridiculously graceful move he’s ever seen another person pull off, the rest of Unit Nine arrives, footsteps loud and hurried. They collapse into the first open seat they see with only minimal care for posture, tossing off rifles and bags and dropping them to the ground with just enough gentleness to ensure nothing breaks. Everyone’s exhausted, if the sight of their chests heaving and the sound of their heavy breathing is anything to go by. 

The moment they’re all back in the truck, Chan counts, eyes sweeping across his teammates’ faces almost desperately. _One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight._ Everyone’s there, everyone’s safe, his unit is whole. 

Some of the tension ebbs from the set of his shoulders. They’re okay, they’re complete. They’ve survived another mission. 

_One-two-three-four-_

There’s a scratch high on Changbin’s temple that’s gently dripping blood down his face, flowing along the curve of his jaw in a lazy stream of crimson. Chan hadn’t noticed it on the mission, wonders what else he missed while he was hiding behind a screen. 

_five-six-seven-eight-_

He always counts himself last, a way to round out the total. Unit Nine is eight people; it always has been and always will be, and even just the idea of excluding himself and counting only to seven makes anxiety churn in Chan’s gut, brings to mind terrifying, soul-crushing thoughts of a face missing from the group of people sitting around him in the truck. 

For a long moment he shuts his eyes, tries to dispel the intrusive thoughts raging in his head like a thunderstorm. No luck. 

_One-two-three-_

Saying goodbye to his unit is as agonizing as always. Chan has been through a hundred iterations of this exact moment over the past two years, and it’s never once gotten even the slightest bit easier. He watches as Minho and Jisung exchange their usual affectionate, vaguely pleading eye contact as they make their way towards their cryo cells; catches sight of Hyunjin’s fingers tangling with Felix’s for the smallest fraction of a second before they seperate -that’s new, and the thought of it fills Chan with as much twisting jealousy and worry as it does joyful compersion- and tries not to feel too sad, too lonely. 

His teammates care for him, he knows, even if it’s not quite in the way he’d like, and he needs to be content with that. Chan will see them again soon enough, and then things will be better. The thought is an empty comfort, but it gets him through watching his unit be frozen again without breaking down or doing something equally pathetic. 

Chan’s about to head back to his room with the full intent of burying himself in his work until the fresh ache in his chest has become at least slightly more bearable when someone stops him. 

“Leader Bang,” one of the med techs says, and Chan turns around from where he’s halfway out the door to meet the dead-looking gaze of a tiny woman in white scrubs, tablet clutched in one skeletal hand. 

He nods at her with a level of respect appropriate for a med tech- they’re far below him in status, but he also finds their empty eyes and access to a variety of deadly drugs far scarier than even the most intimidating of his superiors- and braces himself for the incredibly uncomfortable interaction he’s about to suffer through. 

“Is there something you need?” he asks politely. 

“Number six,” the tech begins, and it takes Chan a second to remember that’s the number relegated to Seungmin for those who find it too taxing to remember his name. He grits his teeth and hopes whatever the tech says next isn’t too disgustingly inhumane. 

“He’s deteriorating,” she says, like this might be some massive revelation to Chan. He’s halfway through opening his mouth to bite something back at her, maybe about how he’d noticed that _months ago,_ when she continues, seemingly ignorant of Chan’s irritation. “At a slower rate than we expected, but he’s really got no more than five or six missions left before you’ll have to get him replaced.”

It takes every iota of Chan’s self-control not to say something he’ll regret. He should be long accustomed to his unit being treated as subhuman, no matter how much it hurts, but something about the fresh loss of his teammates makes holding his tongue this time an almost painful effort. 

“Okay,” is all Chan can manage to reply. “Thank you for telling me.” He turns and starts walking again, hoping to escape before he does something stupid and gets himself sent to reconditioning for defending his unit’s honor. 

“Oh, by the way,” the tech adds absently, sounding like she’d rather be doing just about anything else. “We need you to do some observation for us.”

Chan pauses in his stride and turns to look at her, pushing down the dread rapidly pooling in his gut. Observation is never good. It’s what the District tells him to do when they decide to condition his unit differently, when one of his teammates develops some health concern they don’t feel like telling him about. 

“What should I be looking for?” he asks slowly. Generally, asking straight out what they’ve done to his unit won’t get him anywhere. Med techs, on the whole terrifyingly analytical and apathetic, don’t like sharing unless they see a clear benefit to doing so. 

The tech pauses as if to gather her thoughts. “We’re changing the type of medication we’re injecting the soldiers with,” she answers. “Yours are already under, so we haven’t changed their doses yet, but following the next mission we’ll need you to make sure there aren’t any overly detrimental side effects.” 

The ache of dread in Chan’s stomach shifts to a burning, white-hot anxiety as he takes in the new information. “Are you changing it for unit leaders too?” He knows his voice is coming out just a little too scared, a little too desperate, but he _has_ to know. 

The tech considers him for a long moment, gaze entirely impassive above her face mask. “Depending on how the medication works for the soldiers, yes. If it starts killing them, then obviously we won’t be changing anything.”

Chan just barely manages to avoid hissing a curse. “Why the change, after all this time?” he grits out, trying his absolute best to sound like his interest is nothing more than casual curiosity. 

“The main medical facility in Sector Forty-Two has been working since the Incident to find better conditioning methods for soldiers,” the tech explains, and there’s finally a brightness in her eyes, a morbid sort of interest at the thought of drugging human beings until they’re no better than machines. 

Chan swallows down a lump in his throat of sharp anger and disgust. As sad and lonely as he is, he’d rather spend the rest of his life in solitude than be surrounded by people like this woman for a second longer than absolutely necessary. 

“The new medication is meant to be more effective on a smaller dose, so it doesn’t deteriorate soldiers’ minds as quickly,” she continues, “and it’s made from a new chemical base, so we won’t have any more wasted soldiers due to immunity issues.”

Immunity issues. 

_Fuck_. 

“That’s good,” Chan says blandly, suddenly needing to be somewhere, _anywhere_ else. “But, if you’ll excuse me-”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re _very_ busy,” the tech tells him with a dismissive wave of her hand, something bitterly condescending twisting in her voice. 

Chan doesn’t blink at the biting comment, long since used to the general superciliousness of just about everyone in the compound. “I’m sure you are too,” he replies diplomatically. “I wish you well with your work.”

He doesn’t.

“And I you,” the tech finishes, turning away from him and making it clear their interaction is now entirely over. Chan takes the chance he’s given and slips away as quickly as he can without garnering suspicion. 

The moment the door shuts on Chan’s dorm room, he throws himself onto his bed with an unnecessary amount of force, faceplanting onto the mattress as it creaks beneath him. He feels around in his jacket pocket for his disruptor, just taken from Unit Nine’s now-vacant dorm room, and turns it on. After he decides roughly thirty seconds has passed, Chan lets out a groan into his sheets until his lungs shake from lack of oxygen, releasing all the anger, anxiety, and disgust swirling around in his head in one distressed noise. 

The District has been fighting to figure out how to cure immunity issues among their personnel for at least as long as Chan has been working for them, and he’d been more than happy to survive on that tiny loophole for as long as he could. When the first memory wipe he’d been forced through as a kid didn’t take, he took it as a fluke, pure luck, and merely braced himself for the certain reality of losing everything he’d ever known. When the second also did nothing, as did the third, and the fourth, as well as every wipe he’d been forced through for the next five years, he started to realize there was _maybe_ something different about him. 

He’s kept it a closely-guarded secret ever since, even from his own unit, and while he can’t openly rebel against the District without being killed on the spot, Chan still does everything he can to keep the people he cares about safe from District overreach. Immunity is a rare, precious gift, and it would be selfish of Chan not to use it, especially when he has a unit to protect. 

If he were a soldier, he’d be dead. Soldiers with full immunity to the memory wipes -Seungmin’s resistance is just _barely_ weak enough to save him from such a label- are generally disposed of, having learnt too much with no way of being wiped clean. As a unit leader, Chan gets wiped so infrequently that he can act his way out of raising suspicion whenever it does happen.

He has no idea what a memory wipe at this point would do to him- would it destroy every fragile piece of the personality he’s clung to for the past decade, or would it simply wipe away a few hours of his past? While the latter option is certainly preferable, Chan doesn’t want to lose anything if he can avoid it. Anything could happen to him or his unit without him knowing; if Chan were ever to lose himself on these new drugs, his entire unit could suffer or even be sent to reconditioning, and the carefully cultivated secret Chan has been protecting for the past two years would be shattered in an instant. 

Chan sighs, bone-deep exhaustion settling in. The brief elation of having his unit back with him has been eaten away all too quickly by the sickening reality of their mission and the anxiety of knowing his very consciousness now has a limited lifespan, and now all he feels is drained and empty instead of warm and joyful. 

It feels almost like the way things used to be. 

It’s been a while since he’s thought about his past. Chan tends to get too caught up in thoughts of his unit to have much opportunity to think about himself, an unhealthy habit he’s entirely unwilling to kick. He’s been working for the District since he was eleven, meaning that half of his life has now been spent behind the walls of the compound he calls home- a terrifying prospect he tries not to think about as much as he can. 

Chan remembers almost nothing of his life before coming to the District. While his memory can’t be erased through artificial means, a decade of near-constant stress and anxiety coupled with minimal access to anything outside of immediate District control has left most of his memories of anything other than white walls and gunfire no better than tattered ruins. 

His memory of his time working for the District is equally fuzzy, a result of every day being the same, experiences bleeding together until some days the past ten years feel like little more than an ever-flowing stream of stark white and blood red to Chan. Some things stick out, though, immovable rocks in the metaphorical river of Chan’s psyche, and though it’s been a long time since he’s thought of the only other unit he knew -He sees Jihyo, the leader of Unit Eight, almost never, so she doesn’t count- the memory is easy enough to call to mind. 

Once, long ago, years before Chan had even officially been told he was going to be a unit leader, there was another team of soldiers who were among the best of the best. They were called Unit Seven, and they were the so-called “golden unit” of the District- every mission, no matter how difficult, always went off without a hitch. 

Chan wasn’t exactly friends with their leader, a boy who went by JB -and who always told Chan to to call him Jaebum, just as Chan asked to be Chris- but he was as close to him as one could get in the District. They talked at mealtimes, did the nearest thing to commiserating about the struggles of their training they were allowed to, and slipped each other extra rations when the guards had their heads turned. They helped one another with the quiet rebellion of their names, too, of using labels that they’d chosen for themselves instead of ones sanctioned by the government.

Chan was never quite sure what Jaebum saw in him, but he saw in Jaebum a certain look in his eyes that he knew was reflected in his own, a sharpness that shouldn’t be there. They never discussed it -there was nothing to say, really, and if either of them had ended up being wrong, the consequences would’ve been deadly- but Chan always sort of _knew_ that Jaebum was like him, and he relished in the knowledge that he wasn’t entirely alone. 

They’d known each other for about six months before Jaebum was properly promoted to the position of Unit Leader, and he remembers how it had changed Jaebum completely. He’d been busier, for one, always rushing from place to place with a tablet in hand and his thoughts a million places at once. The look in his eyes went from bright and sharp to perpetually exhausted, and Chan could see constant strain in the way he held himself. Being a leader was taxing beyond belief. 

But the biggest difference was that, for the first time ever, Jaebum really, truly cared about something in his life. He probably held some sort of affection in his heart for Chan, sure, but it was nothing compared to the way he felt about Unit Seven. 

He remembers how Jaebum had spoken of his teammates, the quiet, poorly-hidden pride in his voice as he’d talked of their perfect missions. The reverence dripping from his every word as he whispered poetry about the way they smiled, their brutal, terrifying efficiency in combat. 

One in particular -Jinyoung, Chan remembers, the name permanently associated with the closest expression to a smile Jaebum ever wore in his presence- Jaebum had positively adored. The District had let him speak of his unit fairly openly at the time, likely believing it to just be free propaganda for their cause, and Jaebum had abused that little privilege until some days Chan felt like he knew more about Unit Seven than its leader did. He never minded listening, not when it made Jaebum so obviously happy, and Jaebum certainly never got tired of talking about his unit. 

“You’ll love it, Chris,” Jaebum had gushed a million times over, eyes alight with excitement. “They’re all just so _wonderful_ . So smart and competent and nice and they _like me_.”

Looking back on it, Chan fell in love with his own members long before he’d ever gotten to meet them. If they treated him with a fraction of the attention and affection as Unit Seven treated Jaebum, he knew he’d be a goner. For the first time since he’d been brought to the District, he was excited, almost hopeful for the future. Someday he’d get to be just like Jaebum, with a perfect unit of his own to treasure, and all the training and stress and pain would be worth it ten times over. 

Of course, in the way of most good things, it didn’t last. 

One night, a little over three years after Unit Seven was established, Jaebum had slipped into his dorm room and handed him a scrap of paper and a metal tin with a pill and an activated portable disruptor in it, a piece of tech so illegal it made Chan anxious just to look at it. He’d ignored all of Chan’s hissed questions, instead simply pressing a finger to his lips and offering no explanation beyond a sad smile. 

Chan knew exactly what it meant, even if he refused to admit it to himself at the time. He’d watched helplessly as Jaebum left him, too scared to chase his friend down and confirm his suspicions. 

Sure enough, the next day Jaebum and half of his unit had vanished. The other half had been caught, judging by the way Chan caught a glimpse of three of them being walked into an interrogation room, handcuffed and with blood dripping down their faces. 

Chan has seen many people die, executed both by his own hands and others’, and he’s seen just about every possible iteration of fear and sorrow a human face is capable of creating. The expressions on the last three members of Unit Seven’s faces as they were marched into that room, though, were so utterly broken Chan was for a moment entirely certain the people he was looking at weren’t human. Rather, they were grief manifested, shells that wore human skin and had human voices but inside held nothing but oceans of deep gray anguish instead of hearts and souls.

Immediately, almost on autopilot, Chan had walked back to his room, activated his newly-acquired disruptor, and read the note Jaebum had left for him. At the time, he’d been furious at Jaebum in a way he hadn’t thought was possible. 

He couldn’t imagine ever doing that to Unit Seven, couldn’t understand what could’ve possibly driven Jaebum to. For someone who claimed to be singularly devoted to his unit, who said he’d die for them in a split second if necessary, he certainly was willing to put them through hell. And why? Jaebum had seemed happy enough, content with his role in the world, as problematic as it was; his disappearance was equal parts confusing as it was devastating.

Jaebum didn’t provide any explanation on the red scrap of paper- instead, it was a set of coordinates, and when Chan had gotten a moment to himself to look them up -not quite exactly, never exactly, but close enough that he knew the area- he’d found they were headed to an abandoned factory building in a nearby city’s failing industrial district. 

The pill was a standard-issue memory-wipe tablet, strong enough to erase about twelve hours of a person’s memory- an option for Chan to forget all of this, a way out for him. One last kindness from Chan’s only friend. 

Chan flushed it down the toilet immediately. As much as he’d disagreed with Jaebum’s decision, he certainly wasn’t going to forget about what he’d done. Besides, pills like that were useless to him. Maybe Jaebum hadn’t understood as much as Chan had thought, or maybe it was more of a symbolic thing. Chan couldn’t exactly ask him. 

Chan had initially assumed Jaebum had just trusted him with his unit’s whereabouts, but he’d written beneath the coordinates something Chan never understood. 

_For when you need it too_ , he’d put, and Chan had never quite gotten what exactly he was supposed to be needing even when he’d become the leader of Unit Nine. He had his team, he had himself, and that was all he could ever ask for. He would never try to do what Jaebum did, was almost offended he’d been offered the chance- Chan would never willingly put his team at risk in such a way, never risk losing any one of them. Leaving the District was something unthinkable. 

Following Jaebum’s disappearance, the District took in everyone for mandatory reconditioning within a day. It consisted of a drugging session that involved Chan being stabbed with at least eight needles and then pretending to pass out for three hours -his leg ached for days because of the angle he’d had to keep it at- and a long lecture upon coming to consciousness about things like “integrity” and “service.”

Chan survived, long used to such things whenever the slightest transgression occurred -it was more often that one would think, in those days; sometimes even multiple times in a week- but the aftermath was a special sort of torture. For the first time in years, he was entirely alone. 

No one to talk to, nothing to look forward to; Chan had nothing but white walls and the anguish of loss to keep him company. 

He wasn’t mad at Jaebum for leaving him behind. Taking Chan along would have made the whole plan twice as difficult, twice as likely to fail, and Jaebum had chosen to mitigate the risk. It was basic strategy, a rule they’d both been taught until it was seared into their brains, and Jaebum had already risked his life just to say goodbye to Chan. He couldn’t ask for anything more than that. 

Still, though, Chan desperately wished that he’d been taken too. Without his only companion, the bleached, sterile walls of the District seemed to be closing in more and more every day, leaving him choking and frustrated and impossibly lonely. 

Getting his team was a blessing. 

Scarcely a month after Jaebum’s escape, the District had informed him officially he’d be getting a unit of his own, and from the first moment he’d laid eyes on them, he was gone. Seven people, standing in front of cryo cells in perfect parade rest. He’d made eye contact with the first person in the line -Lee Felix, he knew from his days of obsessively reading their tiny files- taken one look at the way his eyes glittered in the dull fluorescent light of the cryo room, and decided he’d kill or die for any of them in an instant. 

Unit Nine was _his_ \- not to own or control, but instead to guide, to protect, to lead. Everything the District had taught him about leadership was laughably wrong.

Getting to know his teammates had only made his feelings stronger, growing the smallest seed of adoration to a blooming, full-grown, sprawling mess of love and affection in record time. 

It was all too easy when they were, well, themselves. While Chan didn’t exactly have a vibrant social circle to compare his unit to, he knew almost immediately that they were special beyond belief. 

The little hints of personality that sometimes shone through their conditioning were almost addictive, impossibly wonderful in their rarity. He hadn’t expected to see any, really -the District was adamant that all of their soldiers were perfect machines- and that made their appearances all the more special, memories Chan carried with him like the most precious of gemstones. 

The first time Jeongin had smiled at him, bright and beautiful, eyes crinkling up and lips stretching wide in shy but profoundly genuine joy, Chan was so startled he forgot to breathe. It had been so long since he’d seen anyone smile, much less at _him_ , that for a second he’d been so overcome with emotion his poor, intimacy-starved brain simply shut off. 

Jeongin’s grin then fell away from his face like a star crashing to earth, replaced instead by a glint of terror in his eyes, an uncertain set to his mouth as fear set in that he was about to be punished for showing such strong, unwarranted emotion. 

Something in Chan’s heart cracked at the sight, and all he could do was smile right back, tried to show the all-encompassing fondness he felt towards his teammate through eye contact alone. Jeongin grinned back, then, smile returning to his lips like it had never left, and Chan _ached_. 

Although the choice had technically been made long ago, when he’d looked into Felix’s eyes that first time and had been hit with an urge to _protect_ so strong it nearly bowled him over, Chan decided right then and there that he was going to let Unit Nine be as free as he could allow them to be. They deserved to feel joy, to be able to do something as simple as smiling at each other and him without fear of reprimand. 

The process was painfully slow, hindered by every memory wipe and every new bit of conditioning forced into his unit’s heads, but over time Chan watched them blossom into the bright, beautiful people they are now. He cherishes every memory he has of their milestones- of the first time Changbin broke through his conditioning completely, when Minho first snuck Chan extra rations one day after realizing he hadn’t eaten breakfast. 

The District’s algorithms are never wrong. They have a knack for matching people up perfectly, for better or for worse, and the knowledge that such bonds are only made to be broken has done nothing to dissuade Chan from falling deeper and deeper until the only light in the darkness of the hole he’s made for himself are thoughts of his unit. 

He’s never understood why Jaebum left all those years ago, why he’d disappeared in the dead of night with scarcely a goodbye and ripped his team apart in the aftermath. 

Chan gets it now, though. 

He’s not sure of the specifics of what happened with Unit Seven, probably won’t ever know the full truth, but Chan understands with perfect clarity why they left.

Chan sits up in bed and reaches underneath his thin mattress, groping around in the tiny space until his fingers brush metal. Grabbing hold of the object he’d touched, he tugs out the tiny tin Jaebum had given him all those years ago, red scrap of paper nestled inside. Despite not really needing to look at the paper anymore, having long ago memorized the coordinates Jaebum had given him, Chan still likes to look at it whenever he reminisces, enjoys staring at Jaebum’s messy handwriting and imagining what he’d tell him about Unit Nine were they ever to meet again. 

_For when you need it too_. Jaebum had known somehow that Chan would end up at this point. Maybe they were more alike than he’d ever realized. 

If Chan gets wiped, he might lose memories of his unit no one else has. If Chan gets wiped, he might die. If Chan gets wiped, he really will be a puppet of the District. 

If Chan gets wiped, his unit will suffer.

In that moment he makes a decision, its ramifications too momentous for him to even risk thinking about it. The only thought in his head is a quiet sort of certainty, a warmth that suggests this decision was likely a long time coming- the drugs were just the last straw. 

Chan doesn’t really care about what happens to him, has far too much blood on his hands to place any real value on his own life, but his unit is everything. They’re innocent in all of this, merely following orders they don’t understand well enough to protest. 

At the very least they won’t get punished for what Chan’s going to do. The District thinks all of its agents are no more than puppets, toy soldiers with only the vaguest impersonations of personalities stolen from other people. If they get caught, they’ll get memory-wiped and sent back to cryo within five minutes- Chan, on the other hand, will be lucky if he’s killed after weeks of torture. Honestly, death would be a gift at that point, far preferable to being wiped and reset, to lose himself for the first and last time. 

He’s not sure where they’ll go in the long-term, but wherever Jaebum had taken the remains of his team is as good of a starting place as any. Even if Jaebum more than likely won’t be there -though Chan hopes against hope that he will be- surely it’ll be a safe enough place to hole up for a while and plan their next move. 

It’s not a plan, barely even the barest bones of an idea, but it’s enough. Unrolling the slip of red paper, Chan looks over the coordinates again, mentally calculating how far from the compound it is. He remembers what the building looks like from the satellite images, could probably pick it out from the ground-

The rest of the day passes almost in the blink of an eye, time flowing impossibly fast now that Chan has a new goal in his sights. The universe always seems to speed up whenever he has something to strive for, an ever-present reminder that he needs to keep or get left behind by the very world he lives in. Fortunately for him, he’s long-accustomed to living up to unreachable standards. 

Chan’s going to do it. He’s going to escape the District, and he’s taking his unit with him. 

The plan takes three weeks to set in motion. 

It sounds like a long time, but escaping from a system entirely designed to stifle dissent by absolutely any means necessary is the kind of ordeal that would normally take months at a minimum. Luckily for Chan, he’d once tried to quietly plot an exit strategy in his third year of working for the District; it was meant as insurance, really, not something he’d ever planned to use. It was supposed to be a last-case scenario in case their base ever got attacked, a fear that had once been very logical but was now almost laughable, with the District’s hold over their territory absolute. 

He knows perfectly well what would happen if he were to actually escape- he’d be hunted until the day he died, and that day likely wouldn’t take long to come. 

(Now, though, when trapped between the options of near-certain death and losing himself to the District, the option seems far more appealing.)

Because of that half-baked plan, he has quite a few things stashed around his room in preparation for a potential escape, from food to medical supplies to a loaded pistol he’d stolen six years ago in what ended up being one of the most harrowing experiences of his life. The District rarely does room checks, preferring to stalk everyone through their camera systems, so half of the items aren’t even well hidden, simply stuffed out of immediate sight or in whatever cabinet was closest at the time he’d acquired them. 

While the supplies are a good start, they’re nowhere near what Chan will need to sustain eight people on the road, especially when they’re all used to the high-calorie, high-nutrient diets that are a necessity for soldiers. There are also a million other logistical issues Chan needs to sort out. His cybernetics, for example. The trackers buried in his Unit’s wrists. How exactly he’s going to move the supplies he’s accumulated from his dorm room to the back of some vehicle. 

And of course, the most difficult problem of them all- actually convincing his unit to ignore a lifetime of brainwashing and run away with him. 

_How did Jaebum do this_? Chan finds himself wondering almost too frequently. The task before him feels insurmountable at the best of times, and Jaebum had somehow managed to pull it off without a single soul knowing.

Jaebum, though, had failed. Unit Seven didn’t escape in its entirety, and Chan will not, _cannot_ , allow the same to happen to his own unit. He has to do everything Jaebum did and do it better, all without any sort of guide or precedent to help him. 

It’s impossible in theory, but everything about Chan’s survival up until now has been impossible. All he can do is work through every issue thrown at him, thoughts of his unit his only encouragement. 

It’s a lonely couple of weeks -lonelier than usual, that is- but the time is made short by planning and worrying about everything under the sun. Even nights are no reprieve from the work; every other day, Chan, disruptor clutched in one hand, makes the perilous trek to the garage in the pitch-dark to examine every vehicle there, searching for the best candidate to escape with. 

He’s lucky, at least, that the amalgamation of genetic and cybernetic modifications the District has been forcing Chan through since he was eleven included increased night vision, among other things. 

(Night vision and the ability to function perfectly on two hours of sleep a night seems a benefit far more suited to soldiers, but apparently they’re too easily damaged to be worth the effort and cost of modification. Not the District’s smartest decision, but one Chan is glad to reap the benefits of.)

When he eventually does find that perfect vehicle, he begins the arduous process of emptying out his dorm room to shove it under seats and into little compartments inside of it. It takes far longer than he expects, mostly due to his own unwillingness to carry any load he can’t bolt with if necessary, but eventually his dorm room is as standard-issue as it appears, minus a couple of trinkets he still keeps hidden under his bed. He’ll take those with him the night they leave. 

From there, waiting is all he has left to do, and it rapidly becomes excruciating. Chan can only take his unit with him when they’ve already been unfrozen for official reasons, as doing it himself would draw far too much suspicion. That requires them to be sent on a mission, and at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be one coming. Evaluation isn’t for another three months, and Chan is fairly sure he’ll keel over from the stress and anticipation of everything long before that day comes. 

Luck seems to be on his side, however; soon enough, Chan is given orders to unfreeze his unit for an espionage-style raid on a company suspected to be harboring a District resistance cell. The details of the mission and the expectations for Unit Nine fly right over Chan’s head as he’s briefed, ignored in favor of planning out how exactly he’s doing to de-condition his Unit over the course of a mere seven days. 

It’s more time than he’d dared to hope for -normally he gets two or three days with his unit before missions at absolute best- but the idea of breaking through the brainwashing his team has been subjected to for the entirety of their lives is daunting, to say the least. 

Still, he’s determined to do it. Two years of living under minimal District control when unfrozen has to have had some sort of positive effect on his unit’s psyches; he just has to push them a little more in the right direction than he normally would. 

He uses every tactic he can, even ones that push the envelope of what’s acceptable within District protocol. Ordinarily it’s a risk he’d never even consider taking -a small bit of mental healing isn’t worth the potential wrath it invites upon Unit Nine- but he needs to ensure his unit is as mentally unburdened as he can get them. 

The best leverage he has is that his teammates trust him implicitly. More than than the District, more than themselves, and just as much as the rest of their unit. He supposes it makes sense- he’s the one who leads them into battle, the person who does his best to protect them from all the bad in the world- but the thought still makes his heart flutter in a way he tries his best to quash.   
  


So, while Chan can’t incite them into direct rebellion, he _can_ plant the seeds of dissent in their heads and help them to bloom. He starts almost immediately, abandoning his unit in their dorm room to get reacquainted for far longer than he normally would. It’s a calculated risk that could go one of two ways, with his teammates either growing closer or not speaking at all, and Chan is immensely relieved to find everyone crowded together on two adjacent beds and talking quietly when he returns. 

From there, the next seven days become a delicate balancing act of allowing his unit to figure out things for themselves while also subtly teaching them that everything they know about the world is a lie. It’s infinitely easier said than done. 

Chan never reprimands his unit for speaking out, but now he does what he can to encourage it. He asks for opinions on tactical questions, dramatically complains about the taste of their meals before every meal until everyone else is laughing and loudly agreeing, and tells them flat-out that the disruptor is perched on the edge of their bathroom sink as a protection against the District’s privacy overreach. Unit Nine takes everything in with no visible reaction, but Chan knows from experience they’re turning everything he says to them over in their heads constantly, adjusting their worldview by the second with every new thing they experience. 

He lets them have plenty of alone time too, alternates between spending every second he can with his unit and leaving to their own devices as much as he feasibly can. It works, somehow, and on the fourth morning he walks into the Unit Nine dorm and catches Minho and Jisung kissing. The two of them finding each other again and again with every mission is a hallmark of his unit’s mental independence, and suddenly he’s more hopeful than ever that he might actually be able to pull this off. 

There’s one other incredibly important thing Chan does to help his unit out too, an entirely new idea he’s never attempted before- every night, for an hour after lights-out, they talk. For the first couple of nights Chan almost exclusively leads the conversation, telling stories and letting every thought he has spill from his lips. He learns quickly that his unit loves hearing of their pasts; they drink in even the smallest of details with wide eyes that glitter in the dark, enraptured by Chan’s every word. 

Though it’s difficult, he tries his best not to influence the redevelopment of their personalities as much as he can, instead sticking to the smaller quirks and stories. The way Felix used to have a habit of checking his pulse before every mission. The time Seungmin had stolen a book, memorized it, and relayed it word for word to a delighted Hyunjin over the course of the next three days. 

As the days pass and Unit Nine comes into themselves more and more, everyone else begins to share things of their own. Often it's insecurities- Minho takes his reputation of being Unit Nine’s ace far too seriously, and Seungmin is perpetually anxious about the repercussions of his memory lapses. All of them are terrified of losing each other. 

Chan does his best to reassure them that things will be alright, that he’d sooner die in a second then let any of them be hurt. It seems to help somewhat, but he can still see the vestiges of uncertainty lingering in their eyes long after their nighttime talks. Encouraged, he waits, until the very last night before the mission-

“Why does the District do all of this?”

Chan doesn’t answer for a long time, so long that Hyunjin almost starts to backtrack. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t question anything, I just-”

“Because they don’t care,” Chan says at last, and his voice slices through the velvet of the dark like a knife. Hyunjin cuts off mid-syllable, and the rest of Unit Nine seems entirely frozen. “They don’t care about you, and they don’t care about me, and they don’t care about our bond. We’re disposable. Just tools to be used and thrown away in the name of progress and control.” His voice is bitter, cynical in a way he almost never gets as a decade of resentment drips into his words like acid. 

“But they-” Changbin pauses, presses his hands over his eyes in a gesture that seems almost pained. Next to him, Jisung wraps an arm around his shoulders, lets him battle with the mental voice of his conditioning with an ally by his side. 

“We’re only alive because we’re useful right now,” Chan continues. “The moment the District stops needing us, they’ll rip this all apart.” 

Jeongin lets out a quiet noise from where he’s lying next to Seungmin, one that’s equal parts terror and sorrow. Chan’s heart breaks at the sound. He hates that he has to do this, has to be the one to scare his teammates with the reality of the world they live in, but there’s no other way to get them to leave with him. 

“I don’t want to lose you guys,” Felix says softly, the words almost a plea. 

“We’re together now,” Chan tells him. “That’s what matters.”

_And soon, we’ll be together forever_ , he doesn’t say, but he cards his fingers through Felix’s hair and hopes he understands. 

The next morning is a quiet one, the conversation of last night still hanging tangibly over everyone’s heads, and Chan takes his time to make sure everyone will be alright for the day’s training. Linking elbows and intertwining fingers and caressing the hair of his unit, he offers them what little comfort he can, tries to reassure them without words that everything will be okay. 

“Today’s the day,” he tells them cheerily, before launching into their schedules for the day. Catching sight of Seungmin and Minho glancing at him suspiciously as he reads, he does his best to hide a grin. His unit really is too clever for their own good. 

The rest of Chan’s day is busy with genuine work, an excellent distraction from the stress of what’s to come. It’s almost too easy to throw himself into reports and last-second “planning” for a mission that will never be executed, and before he knows it he’s escorting his unit to their very last dinner in the District cafeteria. 

If he inhales his food a little faster than usual, no one calls him on it, and soon enough he’s abandoning his teammates to change into their armor while he darts off to his dorm room to pack his last few necessities. The disruptor he takes with him, needing it more than his teammates do for a few minutes, and he slips it into his jacket’s breast pocket as he marches down the hallway. 

After throwing on his own black mission clothes once he’s in his room, Chan pulls out Jaebum’s tin from under his bed and tucks it into a pocket, rubbing the faded metal with a smile as he does. His box of necklaces goes in another, hopefully soon to be worn by his unit once more. The disruptor he shuts off and transfers to his current jacket, where he hopefully won’t need to touch it again for the foreseeable future. 

Chan looks out over his room one final time, takes in the desk he’s wasted so many hours at, the bed he so rarely sleeps in, the almost painful whiteness of the space. 

He won’t miss any of it in the slightest. 

Biting his lips to stop himself from smiling, he shuts the door on his room for the last time and goes to find his unit. 

There are no guards in the garage. The District has slowly grown complacent over the years since the Incident, and since Unit Seven had tried to flee on foot, even when security had been tightened for the rest of the compound the garage had stayed generally unguarded. No soldier has any idea how to drive; what point would there be in stealing a van?

Chan, however, remembers the basics of driving. He has no real memory of his past beyond the faintest of flashes of things long pulled away into the gaping, carnivorous jaws of time, but driving is little more than muscle memory, and Chan’s always been good at retaining physical skills. 

The most important part now is staying calm. Chan knows his unit won’t show their confusion to the cameras and definitely won’t question him openly, so his own acting will be the real test. The District has been watching him and Unit Nine closely for a while now, worried he’ll try to do the same thing Unit Seven did. Their fear, ironically enough, is well-founded, but they certainly don’t need to know that until after he’s long gone. While Chan is far from the world’s best actor, he’s had more than enough practice hiding his emotions from cameras- what’s one more time?

With Chan at their head, Unit Nine marches through the garage, moving down the rows of vehicles with clear direction. He’d much prefer to be at the back of the line, watching over his unit instead of forcing them to follow him blindly, but he has to follow District protocol one last time. 

With nothing but confidence in his stride, Chan marches his unit right past the van they’re supposed to be using for their mission, instead guiding them towards an ancient bus in the back of one row, so old the gray of its exterior is half paint and half accumulated dust. It’s a true relic, maybe even from before the District had total control over every part of the peninsula of its current sovereignty, and Chan had chosen it specifically for that reason. Nothing that old would have any kind of advanced computer system in it, not like the newer vehicles do; That means Chan can drive it entirely by himself, undeterred by any District technology. 

Approaching the doors of the bus, their plastic browned and misty with age, Chan turns the latch to shove the doors open and ushers his unit inside, mentally counting heads as they enter. 

_One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-_

Taking a step into the bus, Chan pulls the doors shut behind him. _Eight_. 

He has no idea how long it’ll be before someone finds out he’s in the wrong vehicle, so he has to act now. Darting up the stairs, Chan moves towards the camera in the corner of the bus, and, with seven pairs of eyes staring at him in poorly-concealed confusion, he rips the offending piece of technology off of the wall and drops it the ground, stomping on it violently until he hears the sound of plastic cracking and glass crunching. 

Satisfied, he turns to meet the shocked gazes of his teammates, making eye contact with each of them in turn. 

“Do you trust me?” Chan asks, tries to keep his voice steady. He has to offer them this choice, even if the mere thought of leaving anyone behind is pure anguish. 

The response is immediate, instinct learnt not from conditioning or fear but instead from two years of trust and affection, from memories long ago stolen but never truly gone. 

Jeongin nods. “Yes.” 

Six other heads incline in agreement. 

Chan smiles so wide it hurts despite the anxiety clawing its way through its gut. “Then we’re leaving.” 

Seungmin lets out a soft gasp, and when Chan turns to look at him he shakes his head. “Sorry.” 

“If anyone wants to stay behind,” Chan continues, slow and neutral, “get out of the bus now.” 

No one moves, seemingly rooted to their seats. 

Some knot deep in Chan’s chest eases, falls away to harmless ropes and lets his heart beat freely again, lets his lungs inhale without feeling like they’re at the bottom of the ocean, taking in water instead of oxygen and being crushed to nothing by the pressure. 

They’re going to stay together through this, no matter what. Eight or nothing. Be it here or on the battlefield, they are a team, and an entirely infrangible one. Chan doesn’t know what they’re going to find outside of the compound, can’t guarantee it’ll be any better than this, but as long as they have each other, they’ll be alright. 

With that in mind, he strides up to the front of the bus, slipping into the driver’s seat. The key is already in the ignition, and Chan turns it uncertainty, startling when he’s rewarded by a stuttering groan of machinery as the engine rumbles to life. After checking the gear shift and putting it into what he’s mostly sure is drive, Chan clutches the steering wheel in a vice grip with both hands and lets out a determined huff. 

Right. He can do this. His unit trusts him with their lives, and if he messes up, he dies- what better motivation is there?

Since every second they stay in the garage is another moment closer they come to being caught, Chan decides the best course of action from here is to slam his foot on the gas pedal with what’s most likely a totally unnecessary level of force, jerking the wheel around so they don’t run immediately into another vehicle, and they lurch forward with an unpleasant screech noise from something underneath the bus. 

“Sorry,” Chan calls out on instinct, hoping no one hit their head. The next turn he makes is smoother, and in no time they’re speeding towards the doors of the garage, wide open in expectation of Unit Nine’s scheduled departure. The bus is through the doors before an alarm can so much as ring, although a siren starts to wail the second they roar out of the garage and into the night. 

Chan pushes the gas pedal down even harder, feels the bus rev underneath him, and they start to approach a speed that would scare Chan under any other circumstances. In just a few moments, they’ve crossed the mess of asphalt and occasional patch of dying grass that makes up the immediate exterior of the compound, and after hurtling over a tiny hill the compound’s fence comes into view. There’s only one main gate, door solid metal and flanked by guard posts, but the rest of the fence is plain chain link. Chan never understood its purpose- they’re not allowed outside of the compound, after all, though maybe it’s meant to keep people out rather than in. 

They can’t get out through the main gate, not with the way it’s fortified, so Chan just aims the bus at a section of fence that looks vaguely weaker than the others and hopes for the best. Sure enough, they slam into the metal links and, with a disconcerting _crunch_ , the fence crumples beneath them like paper. The bus, entirely undeterred by the obstacle, continues to lurch forward, quickly regaining the speed it lost in the impact. 

Behind them comes a crackle of what might be gunfire, but they’re moving too fast and already too far away for it to be anything more than a futile effort. Chan keeps the bus at the same steady speed until he can hear nothing but the hum of the engine and his own thundering heartbeat, and it’s only after he’s entirely certain no one is after them that he slightly eases his foot off the gas pedal. 

All he can see in the dull light of the bus’ headlights is the road in front of him, cracked and sickly yellow in the low light, more pothole than smooth asphalt. Definitely not something the District takes care of. 

For the first time in ten years, Chan is entirely outside of District jurisdiction. 

“We did it,” Chan marvels, voice hushed in awe. It doesn’t seem quite real, like at any second he’ll wake up back in his dorm room, empty and alone. On a foolish instinct, he glances away from the road and takes in the faces of his unit -they’re not even his unit anymore, he realizes with something akin to wonderment, they’re something else- half to check on them and half to make sure this is all really happening. 

Seven wide-eyed faces stare back at him, familiar and, while not entirely tranquil, their expressions are certainly not afraid. They trust him unconditionally, even through this. 

“We did,” Felix says, like he’s not quite sure of what that means, but he’s just pleased that Chan is so happy. 

“We left,” Jisung murmurs slowly, seemingly thinking hard about something, and after a moment he grabs Minho’s hand so tightly his knuckles turn white. Minho intertwines their fingers fearlessly, glancing up at Chan just long enough to offer him a dazzling hint of a smile before he’s moving to drop a kiss onto the crown of Jisung’s head, sweet and languid in a way he never could be back at the compound. 

Chan’s heart feels like it could burst. This is everything he could’ve ever wanted and then some, so euphoric it’s almost surreal. For the first time in quite possibly ever, he’s certain that, in this moment, everything is perfect. Turning his gaze back to the road, Chan keeps driving, rough destination half in mind. 

And just like that, for the first time, they’re free. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: why does everyone always make Chan suffer in their fics? Let him be happy dammit  
> me, reading what I've written: ...oh.  
> (Things get better for him, I promise)
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoyed!! Comments are scientifically proven to make me write faster <3
> 
> Come say hi! I'm gonna post Antumbra memes on my twt so you should definitely come look at them ;)  
> [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/CelSilences)  
> [ CuriousCat ](https://curiouscat.me/CelestialSilences)


	2. Penumbra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out of the frying pan and into the fire- or is it the other way around?
> 
> (Penumbra, n.- a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light.
> 
> _"The penumbra of the eclipse, though fleeting, was a beautiful thing to witness")_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love to my betas as always, thanks Bee and Gwen!! <3

They drive. 

The world outside of the bus is pitch-dark, but Felix finds himself staring out of the window anyway. Part of it is the novelty of having a window to actually look out of, something Felix has never gotten to experience before, but it’s mostly an intense, near all-consuming need to try and take in as much of his new surroundings as he can. 

So far, he’s not having much luck. The night is cloudy, and the road they’re presumably on is entirely unlit save for the headlights of their bus. Felix is sitting too far from the front to see out of the windshield. He can barely even see his teammates inside the bus, can only make out vague silhouettes based more in guesswork than actual observation. 

They’re all sitting alone in their seats save for Minho and Jisung, who are as attached at the hip as they always are, and Felix finds himself wishing they weren’t separated by the impenetrable walls of plastic and protocol. There’s a chill in his bones, one half brought on from genuine cold and half from the atavistic fear tightening around his heart like razor wire, and he’d give anything to be able to touch one of his teammates right now, to let them help ease the choking terror he’s barely keeping at bay. 

Felix wraps his arms around his midsection so tightly it hurts and focuses more intently on the world outside of the window, eyes straining to pick anything out in the dark. He has yet to see or hear any sort of pursuit of their bus; maybe they really have a shot at this? While he trusts Chan with his life, Felix also knows that even his leader’s best efforts may prove fruitless in the face of an entity as powerful and controlling as the District. 

Honestly, the further they drive from the compound, the more Felix questions if this was the right call. While he understands the District wasn’t safe, that there was an expiration date on Unit Nine’s very existence, escaping is even less of a guarantee of safety. The greater world of Clé could contain quite literally anything, and they could just as likely survive there for a month as they could a day. 

He sighs, and the window he’s resting his forehead on becomes coated with a thin film of condensation. For a moment, all he can see is gray. Felix hurriedly wipes the fog away with his fingertips and resumes his staring. 

They’ve been driving for so long Felix has fogged up and cleaned his window a solid ten times when Chan starts yawning. He barely hears it at first, the sound nearly unnoticeable over the rumble of the bus’ engine, but as it progressively gets louder and more frequent Felix begins to worry. 

“When was the last time you slept?” Changbin finally asks, when a particularly intense yawn of Chan’s sends the bus swerving.

A disconcerting pause. “A while,” Chan answers at last. 

“With all due respect,” Minho says gently, “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

“I have to be,” Chan replies immediately. “We can’t stop.”

No one argues, mostly because he’s right- they can’t rest for even a second, not without knowing where they are or what’s on their tail. 

“Do you want me to take over?” Seungmin offers from where he’s been sitting at the front of the bus, voice soft but steely certain. “I can learn if you show me.”

Chan pauses for a second. “Okay,” he says. Seungmin stands up, clutching the edge of his seat to keep balance, and leans over Chan’s shoulder. “So this is the steering wheel,” he begins, and from there their voices grow too quiet for Felix to hear. 

Eventually, the bus swerves for a final time as Chan and Seungmin switch places, and with a touch to Seungmin’s shoulder that lasts just a little too long, Chan collapses into his teammate’s old seat. The bus continues along on its course with the perfect consistency only Seungmin can pull off, every word of Chan’s lesson now permanently imprinted in his mind. 

Their leader doesn’t end up sleeping. Felix can see Chan shifting in the dark, never quite settling down long enough to get anywhere close to resting. Felix, despite having never gone a full night without sleep before, is equally unwilling to doze- not now, when they’re still so vulnerable. With the way anxiety is crushing his windpipe and twisting his gut into knots, he’s not sure he could even if he wanted to, anyway. 

Beyond the rumble of the engine and the occasional _thunk_ of a pothole the bus is silent, but Felix knows no one is else is sleeping. It just feels wrong to even whisper to the rest of his team, like it would be breaking some sort of rule. 

So Felix waits. 

Achingly slowly, the world begins to grow lighter, nothing like the way the lights snap on to force Felix awake every morning back at the compound. This is nicer, he finds. His eyes don’t hurt, for one thing, and it’s enthralling to watch light creep into the atmosphere, letting the sky bleed from deep ebony into a brilliant, burning red. 

Once the sky has faded to a bleached sort of yellow smeared with the fluffy gray of a patchy cloud cover, Chan finally tells Seungmin to pull over, and he obediently brings the bus to a stop along the side of the road. They’re in the midst of a stretch of trees greener than everything Felix has ever seen in his life combined, and he hopes beyond hope they’ll be able to get out here even for just the briefest of moments. Maybe this is the place Chan meant to take them all along. 

“Okay,” Chan sighs, half to himself, but in the sudden silence of the bus it carries well enough that everyone turns to look at him. “We can’t stop for long, but I need to tell you where we’re going and what we’re doing next.”

He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling his already messy curls, and Felix sees for the first time just how tired he really is, eyes thick with dark circles and skin as pale as the walls of the compound. Something in his heart sinks. 

“We’re going to a set of coordinates someone left me,” Chan explains. “In the city of Miroh. We should be safe there. And when we are, we’re going to look for a friend of mine.”

_Chan has friends?_ Felix has no recollection of him ever socializing with anyone outside of their unit. While that might just be a flaw in Felix’s -admittedly terrible- memory, it makes even less sense that Chan would know someone who lives outside of the compound. While unit leaders have privileges unimaginable to Felix, he knows they certainly don’t have that level of freedom. 

Despite the confusion roiling in his brain, Felix doesn’t speak up; if Chan thought they needed to know the specifics of what’s happening, he’d tell them. 

“Is it far?” Seungmin asks, tapping the bus’ steering wheel idly. Felix can practically see him plotting routes in his head despite having no idea where they’re going. 

Chan thinks for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he answers. “We’ve been driving for how long?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but Seungmin pipes up instantly. “About four hours.”

No one asks how he knows something like that- Seungmin is so smart it’s almost scary, and they’re all more than used to him knowing just about everything. 

“We’re close, then. No more than another hour.”

“Should we be ready for a fight?” Changbin asks. 

“No,” Chan says, shaking his head. “We need to blend in, not fight anyone.”

Felix has never had to blend in anywhere before- hopefully it isn’t too difficult. 

“Before that, though, we need to take our trackers out so no one can follow us anymore.”

Felix’s hand finds his forearm on instinct, brushing the spot where he knows his tracker is lodged beneath his skin. He can’t feel it, the device buried too well to be in any way discernible from the flesh and bone of his arm, but he’s always been unconsciously aware of its presence regardless. Normally he doesn’t think much of it- it’s not like he breaks District rules on the regular, so the tracker has a very minimal impact on his daily life. 

For the first time, though, he wants it _out_ . Idly Felix begins to scratch at his arm, grating and with a pressure just shy of painful. _Soon,_ he tries to reassure himself, but now all he can do is _feel_ the tracker nestled in between veins and muscle and tendons, metal and evil and wrong and he wants it _gone_ -

Chan’s saying something to them now. He’s smiling, gentle and sweet, and Felix forces himself to focus on his leader. 

“It’ll be okay, I promise,” Chan tells them, voice steady and certain. “We’re going to stick together and get through this.”

“Oh!” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “I brought these.”

From the pocket of his jacket, Chan pulls out a metal tin that jingles from even the slightest motion, popping open the top and pulling out a tangled mass of-

“Necklaces?” Jeongin asks. 

“Good luck charms,” Chan corrects, almost amused. “I’ve given them to you every mission you’ve ever been on.” He deftly begins to unknot the mess of chains with a practiced ease, handing each one out to their owner the moment they’re freed. 

Felix takes his own in his hand and squeezes it like all the memories he’s lost might come back to him through touch alone. The metal of the key is cool, its edges pleasantly smooth, and holding it feels strangely _right_ , a subconscious reminder that he’s been in this position many times before. 

A few seats over, Minho undoes the clasp of Jisung’s with careful motions and loops it around his neck before refastening it. Jisung turns to smile at Minho gratefully, and Minho brushes a strand of hair away of Jisung’s face, affection brimming in his eyes. The two of them seem to be using their newfound freedom liberally, never letting go of each other if they can help it. 

Something about the scene makes Felix’s heart melt to putty in his chest. From the looks on the rest of his unit’s faces, they’re feeling something similar. No matter what comes next, Felix is at least glad they’ll be able to face it by each other’s sides, able to touch and talk to one another freely. 

Okay,” Chan says, clapping his hands together once to get everyone’s attention. “Next order of business- your trackers.”

The trackers turn out to be an easier fix than expected. 

They don’t have an official medic -though everyone is trained in basic first-aid- but at some point in Minho’s exceptionally rigorous training, he’d been taught, among other things, about emergency surgery. While removing intricate cybernetics isn’t quite the same as digging out a bullet, Minho and Chan both seem more than confident in their abilities to remove the circuitry stuck in Unit Nine’s wrists. 

The bus, thankfully, has a collection of foldout tables and even a bed in its back half, clearly having been designed for military purposes, and the eight of them quickly make themselves at home there, sitting on any halfway flat surface they can find to perform surgery or wait for their turn to be cut open. 

Felix was first in line to get his tracker out, and despite the residual sting of the fresh wound in his arm, he's infinitely more relaxed than he was five minutes ago. Now he’s perched atop the back of one of the bus’ seats, one hand holding himself in place and the other absently rubbing his newly-acquired bandage as he watches the rest of his team go through the same process. 

“This is going to hurt,” Chan warns. 

Changbin doesn’t falter in the slightest, continuing to present his wrist to Chan. “I’ll be fine.”

With one quick slice of the scalpel, there’s a thin red line marring Changbin’s arm, and another ten seconds with tweezers removes the tracker in his wrist. 

“You wanna do the honors?” Chan asks, passing him the tiny piece of circuitry. 

Changbin smiles, drops the chip on the floor, and stomps on it with as much force as he can muster. 

Next to him, Minho gently presses Jeongin’s wrist to the table he’s commandeered, scalpel at the ready. “I’ll count to three,” he says kindly. “One, two-”

Jeongin hisses as his wrist is unceremoniously sliced open. He shoots a wounded look at Minho, who just smirks with a vague sort of amusement. Five more seconds with his tweezers and Jeongin is similarly free of his own tracker. 

“What happened to counting?” Jeongin asks dryly, as Minho deftly wraps a strip of gauze around the newly-opened wound. 

“It’s out, isn’t it?” Minho counters, and Jeongin huffs but acquiesces. With a soft parting squeeze of his teammate’s hand, Minho stands up, carefully sets his equipment into their small jar of yet-to-be-cleaned medical items, and moves to sit down in front of Chan. “My turn, right?” 

“Yep,” Chan says, and they exchange grins, lips pulled wide and eyes impossibly soft. There’s a moment wherein they simply stare at one another, having entire conversations through eye contact alone, before Chan at last turns away and begins to prep his scalpel for one more incision. 

The way Chan touches Minho’s wrist as he prepares to cut into it is with a delicate sort of intimacy, like he might just as easily kiss it as he may remove the tracker in it. Minho doesn’t so much as twitch when Chan slices into his wrist, instead watching him unblinkingly while he works. 

When their leader is done tying a careful knot of gauze around the incision, Minho grins at him and stands up. “Your turn now,” he teases. 

Right. Chan has cybernetics too. More than just a tracker, unlike the rest of his Unit- Chan has implants in his bones, his eyes, even some of his organs. From what little Felix knows of their purpose, he’s fairly sure they’re designed to optimize Chan’s biological functions to allow his mind more processing ability for other things. He wonders how Minho will take the machinery out- maybe he’ll just cut Chan open here and now?

“Will there be any aftereffects, do you think?” Chan asks, moving to hop up onto the bus’ singular bed, legs swinging absently. 

Minho hums contemplatively, turning around to pull out a syringe from their tiny box of medical supplies. “Honestly? I have no idea. I’ve never done this before.”

A pause. “This _is_ anaesthetic, right?”

“It’ll be fine,” Chan says, and there’s a certain steel in his eyes as he speaks that suggests he’d be willing to go through a lot worse than the removal of his cybernetics to make sure they actually get away with this. “And yes.”

“You really thought of everything,” Minho says, an amused sort of fondness bleeding into his voice as he snaps on a fresh pair of rubber gloves. Chan laughs, bright and pleased, and Felix smiles without really knowing why. 

Seungmin speaks up from the driver’s seat, having by now effectively claimed it for his own. “If you’re going under for surgery,” he asks, voice loud enough that it carries all the way back to Chan, “who’s going to be in charge while you’re out?”

Minho is the easy answer, Felix knows -as their unofficial field leader, he has the most authority behind Chan, thought it’s a power he’s never had to exercise- but Minho will also be the one cutting Chan open, so he’s not exactly the best candidate. 

Beyond that, though, they don’t really have any kind of hierarchy. Unit Nine isn’t meant to be divided up enough to warrant a proper chain of command beyond the bare minimum. 

“Well, you could just manage yourselves for a bit,” Chan suggests, eyes sweeping over everyone in the bus to gauge their reactions. The six people whose faces are visible to Chan are all wearing matching expressions of confusion and vague dismay. 

“We _could_ ,” Changbin agrees slowly. 

“If that’s what you want,” Jisung adds. 

Chan shakes his head. “No, it’s about what you guys-” 

A pause. “Oh. Right.”

For a moment, a creeping worry surfaces in Felix’s mind that they’ve disappointed him somehow, but all he does is murmur a, “we’re going to have to talk about that,” to himself before smiling reassuringly at them. 

“You guys can just get some sleep while I’m out,” he offers mercifully. To Minho, he says, “we should probably start soon, get it over with.”

Minho somehow manages to piece together a surgery curtain with a couple of their jackets, and as he gets ready to inject Chan with the anaesthetic he’d brought along he gently but firmly coaxes the rest of Unit Nine back into their seats. Collective anxiety keeps them from moving any further away from the back half of the bus than necessary, leaving them squished into the two closest rows of seats to the “curtain.”

Felix ends up next to Hyunjin, touching from their shoulders to their hips, and his very being seems to sing from the contact. Finally warmth, finally comfort- he’s not terrifyingly alone any longer. While he’s more relaxed than he’s been in hours, however, Hyunjin seems the opposite, rigid in his seat and constantly glancing back towards the curtain with wide eyes. 

Unsure of what else to do, Felix gently takes Hyunjin’s hand in his own and intertwines their fingers, squeezing once in reassurance. The action draws his teammate’s gaze to him, and he tries for a smile. The result is more watery sympathy than comfort, but the set of Hyunjin’s shoulders eases slightly all the same. 

Minho pokes his head around the edge of the curtain one last time, eyes sweeping across the bus quickly to make sure nothing is amiss. He meets six anxious gazes, far too wired to be sitting alone with their thoughts for the next couple of hours. He smiles, all softness and reassurance. 

“Sleep,” Minho tells the six of them, and Felix does. 

An untold amount of time later, he stirs awake again to the shuffling of fabric. For a moment, he forgets that he’s not back in their dorm at the District compound, that he’s not curled up beside Chan or Seungmin or Changbin in a bunk bed. Then the memories hit and Felix jerks into a proper sitting position, making eye contact with a startled Minho. 

“Are you okay?” he asks from where he’s taking down the makeshift surgery curtain. 

“Are you?” Felix replies instantly. “Is Lea- Chan?” 

Minho smiles, exhausted but relieved. There are dark circles under his eyes darker than Felix has ever seen on anyone who isn’t Chan. “He’ll be asleep for another few hours, but he’s stable, and everything that needed to come out did.”

Felix immediately feels something deep in his chest relax. “Good.”

Next to him, Hyunjin lets out a small sigh in his sleep, curling into the dip in Felix’s shoulder. He rests his head atop his teammate’s instinctively. Their hands are still tangled together in the space between their bodies, uninterrupted even by the naps they’d taken. 

“Rest,” Minho tells him quietly. “We’re safe for now.”

_Not yet_ , Felix wants to tell him, but something about Minho’s expression and the feeling of Hyunjin at his side makes the words die in his throat, the anxiety withering up in the face of their light. He closes his eyes. 

There’s light now.

Dawn had already spilled its way across the sky before Felix had fallen asleep, but now the world is awash with sunlight, so bright it almost burns to keep his eyes open. Felix persists- there’s no way he’s going to miss even an inch of what the larger world has to offer. 

They’re on the move again, and instead of the stretch of trees they’d been driving through earlier, they’re now in a massive field, empty save for a seemingly endless sea of high grasses and the occasional rusted wreck of what might have once been a vehicle of some kind. There’s a faint dirt road cutting through the green, but when even that eventually comes to an end, a now-conscious Chan again tells Seungmin to pull over. 

There’s a disconcertingly cloudy look in their leader’s eyes, but his voice doesn’t shake in the slightest when he stands up and looks them all over. His posture is hunched in a way that suggests he’s clearly in some amount of pain, but he doesn’t complain and no one else asks- they have to trust Chan knows his limits. 

“Okay,” Chan says. “The whole story, now. Before we get out.”

It’s one of the things Felix appreciates most about his leader- he takes the time to tell them things, to answer their questions instead of simply ordering them around. It makes Felix feel, well, human. Like he matters beyond being simply a body to be used and eventually discarded. 

“Before any of you were ever soldiers, there was another combat unit like us. They escaped,” Chan begins, and from there he explains to them Unit Seven and their doomed quest for freedom. By the end of it, everyone is gaping at Chan, eyes wide and hands pressed to mouths in visible dismay. 

“Are the rest of them alive?” Hyunjin asks the moment Chan is done speaking. 

“I think so,” Chan says with conviction. “Jaebum’s smart and his unit’s the best of the best. If anyone could survive out here, it’s them.”

“And you’re sure they’re going to be at the coordinates Jaebum gave you?” Jeongin questions. While his words are openly skeptical, the way he’s biting his lip and watching Chan almost nervously suggests it comes from anxiety rather than direct disrespect. If their leader is wrong, the District catching up to them could be the least of their worries. 

Chan smiles, wan despite his best efforts to appear confident. “I really hope so.”  
  


A pause. “We should get going- no point in sitting around.”

Obediently, they all move to file out of the bus. Felix is the last one off save for Chan, and in the corner of his eye, when he thinks no one’s looking, Felix watches as his leader hunches in on himself and squeezes his eyes shut. Alarmed, Felix whirls around to help. 

“I’m fine,” Chan says before he can even open his mouth. His voice is entirely steady, and he sounds almost like a separate person from the pained figure Felix had just seen. “Really.”

“Are you sur-” Felix begins hesitantly, not wanting to overstep, but Chan shakes his head. 

“Yes. Don’t worry about me.” The words are a clear command, certain and unyielding, and Felix uncomfortably but obligingly starts to head down the stairs of the bus. 

He winces at the brightness before he even makes it outside, its glare making his head ache. Then he steps out of the bus properly, into the larger world for the first time, immediately landing in the midst of a beam of light-

“It’s _warm_ ,” Seungmin marvels. 

It feels like resting his head against his teammates’ shoulder, like the physical equivalent of seeing one of them laugh or smile. There was nothing even remotely like this back at the compound. Felix tilts his face upwards and stares at the orb of light in the sky until his eyes sting, then lets them slip shut and basks in the warmth. 

“The sun,” Jeongin says quietly, almost to himself. 

_The sun_ . Right. Most of their missions are carried out in the dark, and even when they aren’t, Felix has no real recollection of ever having felt sunlight before. And the sky, the _sky_ \- it’s bluer than Felix had ever thought anything could possibly be, spreading out above him in more shades than he can count and stretching on near-infinitely . 

When the wonderment fades enough for him to be mentally coherent again, the first thought that pops into Felix’s mind, quiet and hurt, is a _why?_ Why did the District never let them so much as feel the sun every day? Why would they keep something so beautiful entirely out of reach? He wonders how much happier he would’ve been, how much nicer the compound would have felt had he been able to see something so gorgeous every single day, to feel the warmth of the sunlight whenever he wanted. 

On instinct, Felix does what he always does when he’s confused- he turns to look at Chan. He’s stepped out of the bus now and pulled the doors closed, and he watches his unit with an expression Felix can’t quite place. The sunlight glows in his blue eyes, electrifying them until they’re somehow brighter than even the sky. For a moment, Felix can’t breathe. 

Then he looks past him and sees the city. 

Miroh is _enormous_ . It’s a mess of concrete and glass jutting up into the sky as though every building is reaching for the sun, impossibly complicated and awe-inspiring even from this distance. Felix can’t imagine what it would be like up close, to be swallowed up by the massive buildings tall enough to block out the sunlight even at midday. Windows glitter in the light, flags redder than blood wave from dozens of buildings, and it’s all so _much_.

“Are we going _there?_ ” Jisung asks faintly. 

Felix doesn’t so much as turn to glance at him, too wonderstruck to even consider looking anywhere that’s not at the city. 

“Not quite,” Chan answers, amused, and Felix is surprised to find faint disappointment curling in his gut. “This way, everyone.”

The eight of them start to walk single-file through the field, grasses tickling every inch of exposed skin with every step. The air is warm but not overly hot, and Felix is too distracted by the novelty of, well, everything, to be irritated by the constant brush of the grass or the monotony of their march. The world is so bright and beautiful, and there’s always something new to look at- how could he possibly be bored in the slightest?

Then, finally, they come across the remains of something that might have once been a car but is now more rust than actual metal. Leant against it is a large piece of plywood, weathered and dirty and with a message scrawled onto it. 

_THIS WAY TO THE MARKET_ , it reads in barely-legible red paint. Below it, there’s a second sign indicating a different direction for _Deliveries_ , and below that still there’s a third sign for _District_ with an arrow that points directly towards the ground. While Felix doesn’t get the joke, he can certainly read the sentiment behind it and looks away quickly. 

“Is that where we’re going?” Hyunjin asks.

Chan pauses for a moment, glancing out across the field and towards the city. “It’s the right way,” he says authoritatively, “so yes.”

It’s a longer walk than Felix expects, considering how close Miroh seems to be, but eventually they come to something that, for lack of a better description, is a hole in the ground. Carved into the dirt is a tunnel of sorts, braced by metal scaffolding and cinder blocks so old most are more cracks and dirt than actual concrete, leading deeper into the ground than Felix can see. 

_To the Market_ , another sign reads, propped just above the tunnel, and the eight of them obediently start their way down into the underground. 

Half of the lights in the stairwell are dead, dangling limply from the ceiling with their glass smashed in or their wires stripped down to little more than frayed scraps of metal. The few lamps that are working are covered in a thick layer of grime, painting the walls with strange shadows and casting the tunnel in a dull orange glow. It’s so claustrophobic that Felix finds himself subconsciously hunching his shoulders and hoping the walls won’t cave in on them. 

Then they step into the subway itself, and suddenly they’re facing the opposite issue. 

It’s a void. They’re standing in an enormous tunnel, barely lit save for a handful of dim hanging lamps, and everything is made of dark concrete that sucks up the little light thrown upon it and reflects almost nothing back out. The truly massive space -is this why they needed to go so deep underground?- is cut cleanly in two by a chasm that extends off further than Felix can see into the dark, deeper than he is tall and terrifyingly wide. He can’t imagine what a pit like that could ever have been used for. 

The only thing crossing the gap is a makeshift bridge of thin plywood planks, its structure patchwork and warped enough to suggest it’s been broken and repaired frequently. There’s a sloppily-painted red arrow stretching down its middle, a clear indicator they’re heading in the right direction to reach the mysterious market. 

Jeongin, the first to approach, takes a cautious step onto the wood, wincing when it audibly creaks under his weight. Still, he persists, trotting quickly across the bridge with the lightest steps he can. Upon finally making it to the other side he waves the rest of his unit over. “It’s safe,” he calls. 

“Is it?” Minho mutters skeptically, eyeing the bridge with visible trepidation. 

Cautiously, the rest of Unit Nine walks one by one across the planks, careful to avoid the dozens of exposed nails poking through the wood as they move. Felix is one of the last to go, waiting anxiously for his teammates to make the treacherous crossing. While he starts off certainly enough, when he’s halfway across, Felix can’t help but glance to his left and take in the chasm of the tunnel all around him. Pitch-dark and stretching unknowably deep into the distance, its vastness makes Felix feel absolutely tiny in comparison. His footsteps echo hollowly into the emptiness, quickly swallowed up by the all-consuming dark. He shivers and moves faster, nearly sprinting across the rest of the bridge. 

From there, the only two people left on the other side are Chan and Minho. Chan, ever unwilling to take his eyes off his unit if he can help it, gestures his teammate forward. Minho moves forward with confidence at first, but the moment he takes his first glance into the pit, his steps falter. Eyes trained on the void below him, he can’t seem to force himself to take the first step onto the bridge. 

There’s a tense moment of silence wherein everyone simply watches Minho, unsure of how to help from so far away. Then Chan’s hand finds his waist, reaching out to steady him, and he gently guides him forward until he’s taking his first unsteady steps onto the wood. “You can do it,” Chan tells him softly, the words bouncing around the empty tunnel, and the rest of Unit Nine picks up the echo. 

“Come on, Minho!”

“It’s not that far, you can make it!”

Every word seems to allow Minho to take another step, keeping his eyes trained on his unit the whole time. He blinks rapidly as he moves, desperately trying to keep himself from looking down and freezing altogether. Right as he reaches the middle, he slows, seeming to realize just how much further he still has left to go. 

On the other side of the bridge, Jisung and Changbin, closest to the edge, reach out at the same time. Something in Minho’s gaze hardens, and he moves with newfound conviction towards them. The second their arms are in reach, he stretches out both hands, and Jisung and Changbin immediately move to grab a respective hand and wrist and pull him the rest of the way across. 

Minho immediately collapses into Jisung’s waiting arms, one hand still clenched around Changbin’s wrist in a vice grip. “Good job,” Jisung murmurs, and everyone else hums their agreement, crowding around their teammate to offer any encouragement they can. 

Chan bounds across the bridge behind them, seemingly uncaring of the danger. “Are you okay?” he asks before he’s even stepped onto solid ground. Immediately, Minho shifts out of Jisung’s grip and straightens to look at his leader, the ace of Unit Nine once again. 

“I’m fine,” he says, like he can make the words true if he says them firmly enough. “Let’s move.”

On the other side of the gap is yet another staircase, something Felix sincerely hopes isn’t a pattern in Miroh. This one seems much better kept, at least- the metal of each step is worn but clean, and the lights lining the ceiling are all functioning. The stairway’s entrance is, for reasons unknown, divided into lanes by small metal boxes. They once had screens on them, but any sort of technology has long ago been looted from them save for the occasional straggling wire.

The eight of them split themselves up between them and pass through, reconverging as they approach the massive metal staircase and begin to jog up it, each step clanging against the ground and creating a cacophony of noise as they move. 

They climb and climb and climb, past all manner of graffiti and assorted items littering the ground, and suddenly they’re in what might be the largest open space Felix has ever seen. It makes even the compound garage look tiny in comparison despite being packed floor to very-high-ceiling with objects and furniture and _people_. 

The first thing Felix notices are the windows, casting the space in midday sunlight in a way he’d never imagined was possible. They hang high above his head, and half of them are messily covered with paint of some sort, dyeing the sunlight that rains in through them brilliant colors the likes of which Felix has never seen before. 

The second thing, though, and what steals his attention almost immediately, is that the room is _packed._

It’s not so much the people as it is the noise they generate, so loud that it bounces wildly off the walls and rumbles through the floor. There is no such thing as demureness here; no one could care less about anyone except themselves and the small bubble around them that is their crew. Felix has never seen so many people at once, much less being so noisy. There are so many types of clothing, hairstyles, voices- it’s a riot of sensation unlike anything he’d ever even dreamed of back at the compound. Surely even the whole world put together couldn’t contain such color, such vibrance. 

It’s infinitely louder than the District ever was, in terms of both sight and sound. Jeongin winces as a particularly screechy laugh comes a little too close to one ear. No one looks twice at them, instead continuing to talk and laugh without a care in the world, so the eight of them begin make their way through the crowds, pressed close together out of equal parts necessity and uneasiness.

Several of his members look distinctly uncomfortable with their current setting, but Felix finds he kind of likes it. The noise fills him up, distracts him from his own thoughts with the blissful numbness that comes with a sensory overload. It’s incredible, too, to see people being so freely happy, just coexisting with the people they care about without fearing capture or reprimand. 

At last, they’re forced to stop their aimless moving and gawking when they reach a stand packed top to bottom with objects of all kinds, most of which Felix couldn’t name with a gun to his head. It’s clearly an amateur job, with many of the wooden planks making up its structure stuck together with a haphazard unevenness, but beyond that it looks very well-cared for, clean and fairly organized. 

“Can I help you?” A woman asks from where she’s leaning against the stand. Her haircut is severe but messy, like it was cut by shaking hands, and her dark eyes watch them with a scary sort of intensity. She’s not visibly armed, but Felix feels the same sensation in his gut upon meeting her gaze that he only ever does when he’s near District officials. 

“Hello,” Chan says diplomatically, inclining his head. “We’re looking for someone? They might still be here, or they might’ve once been here-”

“Uh-huh,” the woman drawls, stretching out the word like an old rubber band. “And you’re from- where, exactly? I don’t think anyone’s seen you around here before.”

Chan stares at her for a long moment. “We’re from-” he begins, low and unsure, then clears his throat. When he speaks again, it’s with the voice he uses to give orders in the heat of combat, a tone that leaves no room for argument or disrespect. Felix almost snaps into a salute on instinct. “We’re from the main District compound in Sector One.”

That knocks the condescension off her face. Before any more than the slightest hint of shock can flare in her expression, however, it’s replaced with a deadpan expression of metallic hardness. 

“Another one?” she scoffs, entirely disbelieving. “ _Sure_.”

_Another one?_ What does she mean, another one? Jisung catches Felix’s eye and shoots him a look of pure confusion. Panic wells up in Felix’s gut for a moment - _what if he gets caught, we aren’t supposed to question_ \- until he remembers that District rules don’t apply here. The anxiety ebbs ever so slightly, and Felix offers a tiny shrug in reply. 

Chan is the only one who seems unsurprised. 

“Yes, there was a unit that came here before us,” he says, and Felix can tell he’s trying not to seem too eager. “There would have been se- four of them. Do you by any chance remember where they went?”

“Why should I tell you?” the woman says, looking them up and down with disdain. “You don’t belong here, you aren’t one of us- what reason do I have to trust you?” 

“Shut up, Seohee,” a new voice interjects cheerfully. “Stop talking like you own the place when you’ve only been here a year.” 

As the eight of them watch, a man steps out from behind the counter of one of the dozens of stalls lining the space - _6-Days_ , the sign above it proclaims in an elegant, looping font- and saunters over to them. His hair is dirty blonde and floppy, his clothes are rumpled and patched all over, and on his nose rests something that Felix eventually recalls to be a pair of glasses. One lens is slightly cracked, spiderweb lines arcing through the glass and slicing the pupil of that eye cleanly in half. While Seohee looks at them like they’re less than dirt, this man seems far calmer, almost entertained by their presence. 

A muscle visibly jumps in Seohee’s jaw as she clenches her teeth, turning around to look at the man. “They’re District fuckers,” she hisses. “Not customers. I have this handled.”

Felix feels like he should be offended at being called a “District fucker,” but no anger comes. He gets it, honestly. His feelings on the District are still confused and murky, his conditioning still clinging to his mind like stubborn burrs, but he knows that these are the kind of people the District would much more likely slaughter than help. 

“They don’t look very dangerous to me,” the man hums, looking the eight of them up and down appraisingly. 

“They said they’re from the military compound,” Seohee snaps right back. “How could they not be? They’re either spies or soldiers or police or _something_ that will get us all killed.”

The man tilts his head and thinks for a moment. “I’ll take them to my back room,” he offers. “You can stand guard outside the door the whole time if you want.”

In lieu of a response, Seohee simply scoffs and spins on a heel, stalking off deeper into the market. The man watches her leave with a vague sort of amusement. 

“Sorry about that,” he says cheerily, once she’s fully disappeared from view into the crowds. “Seohee’s nice, but she’s protective of this place.”

Turning to face the eight of them properly, the man beams at them, smile quite possibly the widest Felix has ever seen. “So, you were asking about a group of soldiers who came through here a few years back, right?” 

“We were,” Chan says slowly, looking slightly overwhelmed. “Do you-” he begins politely, but the man is already talking again. 

“Well, you’re in the right place.”

“Name’s Jae, shopkeep extraordinaire,” he says, gesturing to himself with a lazy flourish. “And I know exactly who you’re talking about.”

He’s strange. Jae smiles too often and talks too loudly and makes near-constant jokes about things that Felix doesn’t understand in the slightest. He’s everything the District would hate wrapped up into one lanky, bright-eyed package. In the tiny, cluttered back room of 6-Days, the place he’d immediately dragged them -herding them through the market crowds, up a tiny metal staircase, and across an empty, barely-lit hallway- to talk, he’s almost larger-than-life, filling the already cramped space even fuller with his sheer presence. 

Felix likes him. He especially likes how Chan seems almost in awe of him, laughing too much and smiling impossibly wide the whole time they’re talking. It almost seems like he’s grateful to have the companionship, to be able to speak with someone that’s, well, not Unit Nine. 

The thought is a sour one that Felix does his best to shove aside. Chan can show enthusiasm and affection to whoever he likes, whether within their unit or otherwise. He never has a problem when Chan acts that way with everyone else in Unit Nine, so Jae should be no different. 

(He is, though, and it’s a feeling Felix can’t bring himself to think about too deeply. Not here, not now.)

There’s a small table but no chairs in the back room, so Jae quickly pulls out eight crates and bids them to sit down wherever they want. 

Another choice. Is this really what life is like outside of the District? Felix isn’t sure he can handle this much freedom, not when he has no idea of even his simplest desires. 

This time, at least, he’s spared from having to make a decision, as Unit Nine moves on autopilot to clump their crates beside one another and sit as closely together as physically possible, knees bumping and shoulders brushing. Jae shoots them an indecipherable look but doesn’t comment, and Felix wonders if this is just one more thing they’ll have to stop doing to fit in in this new world. He certainly hopes not. 

Chan doesn’t know much, as unused to the world outside of the compound as the rest of his unit, but Jae is kind enough to sit with them and answer their -well, Chan’s- incessant questions. He seems to have an impeccable memory, something Felix admires and envies in equal measure. 

“They didn’t stay for long,” Jae says of Unit Seven, recalling them almost immediately after only a vague description from Chan. That sort of thing is newsworthy, apparently- they’re a bit of a legend, now, known to just about everyone in the market despite their brief visit. “Came through, picked up as many supplies as they could beg off of us, and asked for the best place to hide. No one’s seen them since.”

“Do you have any idea where they might have gone?” Chan asks. 

Jae nods. “I told them to go to Yellow Wood, and from what they said I think that’s where they ended up heading.” 

Sector forty, Felix learns, also known as Yellow Wood, is on the northernmost outskirts of Clé. It’s the sort of journey that could take days on foot, their only real option given the massive expense of the public transport system, and even if they did make it there safely, it’s one of the roughest parts of the country. Once mostly woodlands, much of its land was deforested to make room for farmland, but a terrible drought a couple of years back forced most of the poor farmers there to move elsewhere. Now a stretch of uninhabited plains, its few remaining towns are hotbeds for drug manufacturers and fugitive political prisoners. It’s a good place to escape to, Jae tells them. A place where people don’t ask a lot of questions. 

The majority of these concepts are very, very confusing to Felix. To start with, he’s not sure he even understands what a forest is. He’s too scared to interrupt the conversation and ask, though, so he files it away as something to ask Chan later. 

“And which way is se-Yellow Wood?” Chan asks. Felix can tell he’s already planning, budgeting supplies and deciding how to divide up driving time between him and Seungmin. 

Jae seems to see it too. “Wait a second,” he says, incredulous. “You aren’t going after them _now_ , are you?”

Chan blinks at him. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I told your friends to go to Yellow Wood two years ago,” Jae says slowly, empathetically. “Most people don’t stick around long in a place like that. I seriously doubt they’re still there- do you really want to start off on some wild goose chase before you’ve even learned to survive here?”

_Wild goose chase_? Hyunjin mouths to himself, squinting. 

Chan is quiet for a moment, visibly deliberating. Despite having no plans to contradict his leader, Felix finds himself agreeing with Jae- he’s not sure he’ll be much use to anyone when he’s as constantly confused as he is right now. 

“You’re right,” Chan sighs eventually. “I guess we’ll settle in here for the time being. We’ll start looking for a place to stay.”

“Really?” Jae asks, still skeptical. “Looking like that?” 

Unit Nine regards him with confusion. “Like what?” Chan asks.

Felix hazards a glance down at his outfit. It’s normal enough, or so he’d thought- to be fair, he doesn’t know much about what goes for appropriate dressing in the world outside of the District’s immediate grasp. 

Jae waves a hand at the eight of them like it explains everything. “You’re all so- I dunno, plastic looking. You can’t look like you just walked out of a District building if you want people to not kill you on sight, let alone trust you.”

Chan nods. “What do you think we should do?”

Jae looks them all up and down critically. “Stop being so timid, for one. There are eight of you, and I’ve only heard you-” he gestures to Chan- “say anything this whole time. Do the rest of you even talk?”

There’s a brief pause wherein the seven members of Unit Nine who have been quiet up until now shoot subtle glances at one another, each waiting for someone else to speak up. The silence only stretches on for a few seconds, however, before Jae has already moved on, evidently not looking for an answer to his question. 

“And your outfits, too- you look like mercenaries, or cops.” He thinks for a moment, then his eyes light up. “Honestly, the mercenary thing might not be so bad. Have you thought about what you’re going to do to earn your keep around here?”

A look of wide-eyed distress crosses Chan’s face. “No,” he says, stricken. 

Felix stares. It’s the first time he’s ever seen Chan so clearly caught off-guard, so unprepared. He snakes his hand over to his crate and brushes a hand against Chan’s thigh, and though Chan doesn’t turn to look at him, Felix can see some of the tension bleed out of him. He smiles slightly, pleased with himself. 

“Well, it’s not the most legal or morally upstanding work,” Jae continues, “ but it pays well, and people won’t ask a lot of questions as long as you get the job done. You’re soldiers, right? It should be easy for you.”

“We’ll think about it,” is all Chan says. 

“And beyond that, just don’t be as wildly suspicious as you were coming in here, yeah? Some of the people here wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot you if you’d come up to them the way you did with Seohee.”

“Oh,” Chan says meekly, looking vaguely embarrassed. 

“At least that other unit looked as dead inside as the rest of us,” Jae scoffs. “You guys look very-”

He pauses, shoots a pointed look at the way they’re brushing together where they sit, one entity instead of eight. “Soft-hearted.”

He says it like their bond might be a danger, something to be hidden and maybe even ashamed of. Like people in Miroh don’t depend on each other the way Unit Nine does. The thought is equal parts saddening and nerve-wracking- Felix can’t imagine a world without his unit by his side, doesn’t think he’d even want to survive without them. 

From there the conversation lapses as Jae apologetically explains he needs to get back to his shop. Chan thanks him profusely for his help, which Jae waves off easily. The market is open to them, should they ever decide to come back, and when they get some spending money, well- they know where to find him. 

Effectively dismissed, the eight of them file out of Jae’s back room and start to make their way back towards the main market area. 

“Oh, by the way,” Jae calls, and Unit Nine turns to look at him. 

“Welcome to Miroh,” is all he says, grinning like he’s just told some kind of joke. 

Felix can’t help but wonder if they’re the punchline. 

  
  


The walk back to the bus is a quiet one, the eight of them moving in subconscious lockstep through the grasses. At least they didn’t have to cross the bridge again- there’s a second way out of the market, a route that winds through alleys and abandoned buildings and takes twice as long, but one that remains on solid ground the whole time. It’s a sacrifice no one complained about after seeing the visible relief on Minho’s face. 

By now the sun has slipped lower in the sky, kissing the top of the grasses and burning scarlet. The sky, once blue, has now blended into a mess of color that seems to change every time Felix blinks. It’s a mesmerizing sight, one no one seems to be able to keep their eyes away from, and if they take a little longer to get back to the bus than they should, well, it’s not like there’s anyone keeping track of time. 

Once they’ve reached the bus, Chan pulling open the doors and ushering them all inside, the eight of them collapse into seats. Felix ends up pressed next to Seungmin, and as they take a moment to simply breathe, Jisung lets out a squawk that quickly morphs into a noise of delight. The rest of Unit Nine turns to look at him in alarm. 

“The seats collapse!” Jisung announces with a grin from where he’s fallen to crush Jeongin’s lap with the back of his seat. 

There’s an immediate scramble among everyone -minus Jeongin, still trapped under the weight of his teammate- to shift the rest of the seats, and soon enough they’re no longer separated by the barriers of plastic. Now the front half of the bus is essentially two long benches- an immense improvement in Felix’s eyes, who no longer has the strain to see his teammates over the tops of the old seats. 

Clustered together along the seats, divided in uneven halves to keep as close together as possible, the eight of them allow themselves to truly relax for the first time that day. They’re safe, they have a tentative future, and they’re together; they’re infinitely better off than they were just yesterday. 

“So we need jobs,” Seungmin murmurs to himself after a moment, staring absently out the window. 

Jisung glances around the bus, cramped and uncomfortable even with its new alterations. “And a proper place to stay.”

“And food,” Changbin adds, wrapping an arm around his midsection, and Felix suddenly realizes he hasn’t eaten all day. He’s never skipped a meal before -at least, he can’t remember it ever happening- and he can feel the emptiness in his stomach, a hollow sensation bordering on painful. 

“Oh, right!” Chan exclaims. “The food’s over here-” he stands up and heads to the back of the bus to dig underneath a seat for a moment before triumphantly pulling out a small box of rations. From there he busies himself with distributing food to everyone, taking out one last package for himself after everyone else has been served. 

It’s only when everyone has long since dug in that the conversation resumes. Talking during a meal feels strange, something they were never allowed to do back at the compound, but a pleasant experience nonetheless. 

“So,” Hyunjin speaks first between bites, “jobs.” 

“What about the mercenary work?” Minho asks. “We could do that.”

“That’s dangerous,” Chan says. “We’ve fought mercenaries before, on missions. I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable having us work with people like that.”

“I could do it alone,” Changbin blurts, and, when everyone turns to stare at him in surprise, his eyes go wide and he immediately backtracks. “I mean, not if you don’t want-”

Chan considers him for a long moment. “If you want to do it, I won’t stop you.”

“Is that- an order?” Changbin asks slowly. 

“No,” Chan says immediately. “I don’t give you orders anymore. And you don’t have to follow any.”

“You’re our leader, though,” Jisung replies like it’s obvious. “You should be telling us what to do.”

Chan shakes his head. “Not anymore. Not outside of the District. Here, I’m your equal.”

Chan, Felix’s equal? Chan is smarter, braver, more competent, simply _better_ than him in every conceivable way- at least, that’s what Felix has always been told. He believes it, too; Chan is so kind, so intelligent, and so all-around wonderful that he’d follow his leader anywhere without so much as a moment’s hesitation. There’s a reason he’s the one in charge of Unit Nine and not Felix. 

“But you’re better than us,” Changbin speaks Felix’s thoughts aloud, voice taking on the tone it always does when his conditioning is strangling the rest of his mind, ripping what little personality he can cling to to away from him. “That’s why you’re-” he stops then, as if the order he’s just recieved from Chan and his conditioning are fire and water, colliding only to instantly cancel each other out, and harsly rubs a hand over his face. 

As they always do, the nearest person to Changbin -Hyunjin, this time- reaches out and loops his arms around his teammate’s waist, moves to whisper something into his ear. There’s a long, anxious moment wherein everyone stares at him, waiting, and finally Changbin slumps, boneless, against Hyunjin. He smiles and moves one arm up to wrap around his shoulder, the touch grounding but gentle. 

“Is that what they tell you?” Chan asks quietly, and some fragile light in his eyes flickers and dies. 

“That’s what I know,” Felix says, so fast for a moment he doesn’t even process he’s the one who’s spoken. “You're-” he doesn’t even know what to say, how to put into words everything he loves and admires about Chan, so he settles for repeating Jisung’s earlier words instead, trying his best to impress upon him just how much it means. “You’re _our leader_.” 

“There’s no one we’d rather follow than you,” Seungmin adds, and the six of them nod in immediate agreement. 

Chan’s eyes are watery when he speaks again, glittering like stars in the evening light. 

“Thank you,” he manages, voice high and unsteady. “Thank you for everything.” The words have a near-tangible weight to them, one that hints at a depth of feeling Felix can do nothing in the face of but reciprocate in kind.

No one sleeps very far from Chan that night. 

  
  


The next morning they set out to explore. Miroh is their home now, at least for the time being, and they need to become familiar with it. They can’t travel as eight -groups that large draw attention, it seems, and the last thing they want to do is stick out- so they divide into trios and a duo and prepare to head out right as the sun rises. 

Felix stirs awake to Jeongin shaking his shoulder and telling him they’ve already decided who’s going with who. The two of them will be heading to the eastern part of the city, while the other two groups will be heading north and west. 

Still half-asleep, Felix runs a hand through his hair to shove it out of his face and yawns. Quickly enough, however, his soldier training kicks in and he’s wide awake. Glancing around the bus to see what his teammates are up to. Hyunjin and Jisung are sharing a ration packet for breakfast and talking in low voices. Chan is, with Changbin’s careful assistance, injecting himself with a mysterious liquid that’s hopefully painkiller- his every muscle seems to be taught with pain despite the needle being nowhere near his skin yet. Minho is examining one of the few weapons Chan had brought with him, a small pistol that looks far less deadly than anything Felix is used to using. Jeongin is nowhere to be found, but the bus’ door is open, so it’s not hard to guess where he went.

Seungmin seems to be the only member still unconscious, head pressed up against Felix’s thigh and hair dripping into his eyes. He somehow manages to look even more innocent in sleep than he does in waking, lips parted slightly and face scrunched up from where it’s crushed against his elbow. It feels almost wrong to wake him, but they have work to do, so Felix gently taps his shoulder until Seungmin stirs. 

“Wha-” he mumbles, blinking blearily up at Felix. “Who-”

He jolts up into a sitting position, eyes wide but alarmingly foggy. “Who are you?” he demands, arms snapping up to cross his chest in a vaguely defensive position. “Where’s my unit?”

“Seungmin?” Felix says slowly, gaze boring into his teammate’s to search for any sign of clarity. They’re all well-versed in handling his memory lapses, heartbreaking to witness as they may be, and he knows it’ll clear up on its own within a few minutes. 

This time, though, the light returns to Seungmin’s eyes after just a few seconds. “I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says, voice brittle and small in the way it always gets when he forgets something. “I’m really sorry-”

“It’s okay,” Felix tells him, grabbing his hands and squeezing them gently. “You’re back now, that’s what matters.”

“And you’re getting better,” Hyunjin observes. As to be expected in such small quarters, activity in the bus had stuttered to a halt the moment Seungmin’s episode began, and now all eyes are on him. “You only took a few seconds to come back to us that time.”

“Oh,” Seungmin says quietly, and despite the monumental feat he’s just accomplished there’s nothing but disappointment in his voice. 

“You’ll keep getting better, too,” Chan informs him, smiling reassuringly. “All of you will since you’re not being wiped anymore.”

_Right._ Felix won’t ever have to worry about losing his memories again. The thought is so surreal he can hardly process it- he’s never been allowed consciousness for more than two weeks. Will his mind even be able to hold all the things he’s experiencing, or will the memories simply drain away on their own out of habit?

They don’t, apparently- which serves as a massive relief to Felix when he first reaches the eastern half of the city and promptly falls in love. Even just walking down a single street contains more sights and sounds in it than entire weeks at the compound, so complex and full Felix quickly gives himself a headache with his wide-eyed staring. Jeongin is of course no better, so they regularly bump into passerby and street signs gawking at the nearest tall building or particularly colorful shop. 

And colorful they are- while most of Miroh’s buildings are built of burnt red bricks or sleek, silvery metal, their interiors sparkle with decorations the likes of which Felix never could have imagined existing. It’s overwhelming, honestly; he’s never quite sure where to look next. Felix had thought the market was some particularly gorgeous fluke of nature, but the more he sees, the more it seems like the compound was the odd one out. 

The eastern part of Miroh is a little like the market, but much better kept. Everything here looks professionally constructed and clean, and no one is wearing clothing with patches or dirt stains. Felix only realizes it’s a rich area when he comes across a clothing store with prices in the window, and even with his minimal understanding of how money works, he’s still stunned by the exorbitant number staring back at him. How are they going to afford _anything_ here if even just clothes are such a luxury?

They don’t stop for lunch, either- a single peek at some of the prices in a place called an “artisan market” killed that idea almost instantly. The two of them wander the residential district instead, pointing out the prettiest decorations they can find to one another and joking about how much each apartment must cost. 

It’s nice. Really nice. Felix feels at ease in a way he can’t ever recall feeling, despite the unknowns looming all around him. Miroh feels infinitely safer than the compound ever did already. Jeongin seems to be feeling it too- his high, bubbly laugh rings out through the streets more frequently than Felix has ever heard it before, and his spectacular dry wit makes an appearance for the first time in a long time, sending Felix into laughter so hard it makes his stomach hurt. There’s something about freedom that’s just so _intoxicating_ , makes it so much easier to simply _exist_ and _feel_.

Despite the happiness singing in his chest, warmer than the sun and near-dizzying in its intensity, climbing back into the bus that evening is almost a relief. As much as he’s decided he loves Miroh, it’s exhausting to experience so many new things in such a short period- and besides, he’s missed the rest of his unit. They’re the last trio to get back, and Felix is glad that he’ll be spared any anxious waiting for his teammates.

Chan’s eyes dart from person to person, looking them up and down lightning-fast. Felix smiles when their gazes meet, and Chan smiles back reflexively before his gaze moves on, counting every face he sees and watching as the three of them move to sit down and shut the bus up for the evening. 

The moment the doors close, it’s like a damn is broken- everyone starts talking at once, fast and loud and near-incomprehensible. 

“Everything in Miroh is so big and colorful,” Felix marvels. 

“There are entire _buildings_ full of just books!” Seungmin announces, eyes sparkling. “They’re so much more interesting than the ones back at the compound.” 

“And there are people _everywhere_ ,” Hyunjin adds, awestruck even now. 

“We get to go back tomorrow, right?” Jisung asks, eyes wide and hopeful. 

Jeongin snorts. “Well, we do live here now, so probably.” Despite the sarcastic edge to his voice, he shoots a subtle glance at Chan, checking to make sure he hasn’t overstepped. 

“Everyone can go out as often as they want,” Chan confirms, “just tell someone where you’re going first.”

“Or, you know, go together,” Minho adds. “And with a gun.”

Chan nods. “That too.”

“Did anyone see anywhere that was hiring?” Channgbin asks curiously. “We were supposed to be looking, right?”

Seungmin’s eyes light up at the question. “I did! At the book shop!” 

It’s a start. 

Seungmin goes out and gets hired the very next day- the store is desperate for employees, apparently, victims of some process Seungmin informs them is called “Labor Relocation.” It’s easier than anyone expected. The people in Miroh don’t seem to ask many questions, keeping to themselves as much as physically possible, and they seem to offer the same courtesy to everyone else. According to Seungmin, he’d barely even gotten through asking about the job before he was unceremoniously hired. 

His success spurs everyone else to try for jobs of their own, and slowly they start to find work. Miho somehow ends up as an assistant to Jae -something about pretty people bringing in more customers, apparently- and his impressive wages alone are enough to buy the eight of them food most weeks. Seungmin’s bookstore work covers medicine. Jisung starts stocking at a warehouse and collects them fresh clothes through an artful mix of thrifting and stealing. 

It’s a life, if only because Felix isn’t terrified of losing himself at any second anymore. He goes out looking for work every day, glancing into the window of every shop he can find in hopes of finding a place willing to hire someone with no legal identity and no work experience. But, in the meantime, he’s got nothing to fill his days. 

Leisure time is a new phenomenon for Felix. Back at the compound he never had trouble filling the occasional spare hour with extra practice or simply a nap, but now he finds himself with entire days where he has no work to do. 

Seungmin has settled in best with his newfound free time, taking literal stacks of books from the bookstore back to the bus every few days for pleasure reading. Apparently the manager there is happy to give him anything that’s too dilapidated to sell, which means as long as Seungmin doesn’t mind a few torn covers and the occasional mysterious stain -and he never does- he can read to his heart’s content. 

Felix, unfortunately, can’t do the same. Books just don’t hold his attention very well, not when his whole body is hard-wired to be constantly moving and acting. So, as a way to clear his head and keep himself from going stir-crazy, he’s taken to going on walks through the streets of Miroh. 

Unlike Hyunjin, who’s already started to come home long after the sun has set -never after everyone is asleep, though; no one would be able to rest without knowing the rest of their unit is safe- Felix prefers to walk in the day, to explore every inch of this strange new place and keep himself occupied until the rest of his members start to filter back to the bus in the evenings. The movement and the constant riot of sensation the city offers keeps him from worrying too much, forces any overthinking to stop before it starts. 

It’s odd -and more than a little scary- to go so long without seeing his teammates, especially when they’re so far away. At least when they were separated in the compound Felix had some assurance that they would come back to him at the end of every day, but now-

He shakes his head. Best not to think about it. Miroh is their home now, for better or for worse, and learning to trust his teammates in the outside world is just another part of adjusting.

They may have finally become a part of this strange new world, but now they need to start living in it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chan: everyone, please blend in in Miroh so we don't die.  
> Also Chan: I'm gonna introduce myself as a government soldier to the first person I meet :)  
> (He's trying his best rip)
> 
> Welcome to the new home of Unit Nine! It's a lot, isn't it? And you've barely even seen the half of it!
> 
> (The next chapter is my favorite- you'll see why soon enough ;) )
> 
> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed!! They inspire me like nothing else <3  
> And come say hi!  
> [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/CelSilences)  
> [ CuriousCat ](https://curiouscat.me/CelestialSilences)


	3. Solstice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unit Nine settles into their new home, but stagnancy is hardly their strong suit.
> 
> (Solstice, n.- either of the two times in the year when the sun reaches its highest or lowest point in the sky at noon, marked by the longest and shortest days of the year.
> 
> _"The summer solstice")_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's mentioned in the story, but to provide additional clarification, Unit Nine has been living in Miroh for about three months now.
> 
> (Thanks as always to my beta Gwen <3)
> 
> And please take a moment to help out blm [here- ](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co) we cannot continue to sit idly by and let this corrupt system persist in its cruelty.

Changbin is exceptionally good at staying still. 

It’s not lethargy, no; staying perfectly, totally inanimate, so much so that even the waves of time itself simply flow around his motionless form without disturbing it, qualifies as exercise more taxing than even active combat. Changbin’s body is as rigid as concrete, the rise and fall of his lungs trapped within the unyielding walls of his ribcage, his molasses-slow heart brushing as close to the skeletal hands of death as can be managed without giving himself over to them entirely. 

Just as he was in cryo, Changbin is equal parts living and dead. Just as he was in the District, Changbin exists only to complete a singular task. Just as he has in Miroh, Changbin finds a certain joy in his work. 

The head of his target is lined up perfectly within the neon green crosshairs of his scope. He’s never used a gun with a green sight before, and Changbin finds he likes it, the splash of lively color a welcome sight among the ceaseless, desolate gray of Miroh. His target’s red hat is a pleasing sight as well, brighter than blood and made warm by the early-morning sunlight. It’s almost too easy to focus on it and keep his crosshairs trained on the man’s brain as he smokes. 

His name is unimportant, the sort of thing someone like Seungmin or Chan might need to know, but they’re far away right now, likely just waking up and enjoying the peace of the dawn. Changbin has no care for who he’s killing beyond the vague knowledge that they’re a District official. These contracts are his favorite- they’re ironic, in a way, and he enjoys knowing that he of all people is the one to put an end to anyone who helps perpetuate the District’s system. He thinks this mark is in charge of some part of Miroh’s police force, meaning Changbin feels absolutely no regret about his impending death. 

“You’re clear to fire,” a high voice says in his ear, and Changbin stills even further, every nerve in his body freezing as he makes his final adjustments, ensuring his bullet won’t fly anywhere except into the man’s head-

_Bang_. The rifle goes off and Changbin comes to life to account for its recoil, easily handling the gun’s fierce kick. He drops like a stone to the gritty surface of the rooftop he’s been camped out on for the past two hours, chest heaving now that he’s finally able to breathe properly again. There are no shouts from the building below him- no one’s found the body yet. Good. That gives Changbin more time to run. 

There’s a hole in the rooftop, a rough circle just big enough for a person to fall through, and Changbin army-crawls over to it, pausing only to swing his rifle over his back before throwing himself into the hole. He drops in from the roof, boots hitting the linoleum floor below him with a _clack_ , and immediately comes face-to-face with Wonho, one of the members of the mercenary crew he’s working with for this particular contract. They’re normally seven, but one of their members had gotten injured on a job recently, so Changbin is filling in. He doesn’t mind- they’re all nice enough and they don’t ask many questions, simply letting him meld with the team and do his work. 

“You got him?” Wonho checks.

“Yep,” Changbin replies coolly. 

Shownu, their leader, smiles at him from where he’s heaving the unconscious body of some unfortunate early-riser office worker into a corner. “Good shot.”

Changbin dips his head in an awkward nod, unsure of how to handle the compliment. No one ever praises his shooting skill, not when it’s quite literally what he was made for. 

“We’ll send your payment tomorrow,” Kihyun, their tech expert, tells him, and Changbin nods again. He trusts them to follow through on their promises, and since their business is now complete-

“I’ll be going now, if that’s okay,” he says politely, and the six present members of MX wave pleasantly at him as they pack up their gear. 

“It was nice working with you, SpearB,” Minhyuk tells him with a smile.

“You too,” Changbin replies automatically, unsure of how he could possibly have that impression when they’ve spoken maybe two sentences to each other. It’s a question he can ponder on the walk home. 

He slips a mask on over his face as he makes his way through the streets of Miroh, keeping his head held low and gaze groundward as he moves. It’s chilly enough today that Changbin’s breath would be coming out in puffs were his face not covered, and he jams his hands deep into his pockets in a poor attempt to shield himself from the cold as he walks. 

Cameras perch atop every streetlight along the busier roads of the city like sinister, skeletal birds, gleaming red eyes constantly searching for the slightest hint of dissent. Ironically, Changbin’s face would cause him more trouble than his gun were one of the cameras to spot him- gun restriction laws aren’t enforced outside of the wealthier parts of Miroh, but as a runaway soldier, he’d be hunted to the ground immediately if the District had any idea of where he was. 

One of the cameras a block in front of him tilts to follow a woman carrying a bag of groceries with an almost scary intensity, not rotating back to its central position until she’s long since turned the corner. Changbin shivers and slips into an alley. The sooner he gets to the outskirts of the city, the better. 

The money for this contract will be good, even after it’s been split amongst all eight mercenaries. Whoever wanted the man Changbin took out dead was willing to pay far more than the job was probably worth; Changbin, however, certainly won’t complain about that. 

Assassinations are a part of life in Miroh, and surviving at least one homicide attempt is practically an expectation for most minor government officials. Miroh’s upper class lives in a different world than people like Changbin, and part of that world includes offing people at a truly despicable rate, sometimes for only the smallest of transgressions. Changbin has no idea what the man he’s just killed did to deserve it, and he frankly doesn’t care. All that matters is that he was District, he’s now dead, and Changbin’s getting paid for it. 

He doesn’t need to wind his way through too much of the city to get to the market, but the quickest route does involve him getting through Miroh’s main shopping district, which is an unpleasant experience at the best of times. It’s one very long street packed with shops and businesses, most of which are too high-end for Changbin to even think about going into, and mounted upon every single space that’s not a door or a window is some kind of screen. Everything is flashing and lurid and desperately begging for the attention of any passerby, the sight the right visual equivalent of being shouted at by a hundred people at once. 

Most of the time it’s merely an eyesore, but right now, when Changbin is dead tired and fresh off a kill, the visual overload is downright sickening. Keeping his gaze firmly glued to the ground, Changbin walks through it all as quickly as he can. 

There’s one sign that manages to catch his eye, perched right next to the entrance of the next street he needs to head down. Blood red and absolutely massive, it’s near-impossible not to look at it despite Changbin’s best efforts.

“ _KEEP MIROH SAFE,”_ the screen commands, “ _REPORT ILLEGAL FIREARMS TO DISTRICT AUTHORITIES_.” 

Changbin resists the urge to laugh. Ads like that are the equivalent of putting a plaster over a shotgun wound. Guns are often easier to find than fresh fruit in a place like Miroh, where violence is about as common and messy as dirt. Even if the gun control initiatives touted by the government were anything more than lip service, a grand total of no one in the city would willingly give up their firearms, not when they’re often so deeply intertwined with their very livelihood. 

In Miroh, despite being touted as saviors by the District, the police are an infinitely worse option than simply dealing with one’s problems alone, considering they have less mental autonomy than even Changbin did as a soldier and live and die by the District protocol artificially seared into their brains. Changbin’s seen a few before- dressed in solid black uniforms and holding stun batons, their shaved heads are exposed constantly to the sunlight, allowing it to glint off of the cybernetics embedded into their brains that give the District total control over everything they do and say. They have no need to improvise and learn the way soldiers do -in fact, Changbin is fairly sure they’re those who failed the soldier training program- so they’re not allowed any sort of conscious thought. 

Changbin avoids them like the plague, both to preserve his safety and his sanity. He can’t stand looking at their dull, dead eyes for too long, not when they remind him far too much of how his own used to be. Thankfully, they only patrol the richer neighborhoods with any sort of regularity, so the only time Changbin ever catches sight of District police is when they’re between his crosshairs. 

At last reaching his destination, he quickly threads his way through the early-morning crowd at the market, mainly consisting of merchants heading to open their stores and a few particularly enthusiastic shoppers. Most of them recognize him by now, long used to the quiet man who keeps only the strangest hours and carries rifles far too comfortably through the market despite their -admittedly lax- no-open-firearms policy. They aren’t afraid of him, regardless; most of the store owners incline their heads as he walks by, and a few others offer polite smiles. Despite Changbin never speaking a word to many of them, they seem to recognize within him the same sentiment they themselves live by- intense, all-consuming hatred of the District. As such, Changbin, regardless of the size of his guns or the darkness of the look in his eye, is to be considered a friend. 

He reciprocates every greeting he receives in kind, hoping no one will want to talk to him- Changbin hasn’t slept in about thirty-six hours, and he’d honestly rather die than force himself through any dull pleasantries before he’s gotten to pass out for at least half a day. The thin stairwell that leads up to the storage area of the market is a welcome sight, and Changbin moves as quickly as he can towards it, doing his best to avoid bumping into anyone.

Even the storage complex is busy this time of the morning, crowded with shopkeepers trying to grab what they need to restock their stalls. Changbin pulls the key to the appropriate room out of his jacket pocket and unlocks the door as quickly as possible, trying to get out of the way before someone attempts to force some too-wide delivery through the tiny halls of the storage area and subsequently blocks the whole thing off. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. 

Jae’s back room is a much-needed reprieve from the clamor of the market, and Changbin winds his way through the stacks of goods almost on autopilot until he finds the small back corner where his rifle rack hangs. There’s an entire corner cleared out for him and his unit, though Changbin is by far its most frequent visitor.

Swinging his gun off of his back, he sets it in its appropriate slot with care, allowing it to join ranks with his other pistols and rifles. In a small box below the rack, Changbin removes his earpiece and powers it down before dropping it in with the rest of his mostly-borrowed tech collection. He’s not entirely unarmed even now, with a knife still hidden in his boot and a set of knuckle dusters in the pocket of his jacket, but the loss of his gun still comes with a strange sense of vulnerability, an uncomfortable reminder that he’s simply Changbin instead of SpearB at the moment. 

Changbin likes being SpearB. It’s a safe middle ground between being Seo Changbin, sharpshooter of Unit Nine, and Seo Changbin, civilian. He still gets to shoot things and do what he’s made for, but he also gets just enough autonomy to enjoy himself without feeling overwhelmed by his own freedom. Changbin picks his own contracts, sets his own hours, and lives without constantly chafing under other people’s rules, and that’s really all he can think to ask for in life. 

Trotting down the stairs and brushing past another couple of store owners, Changbin slips into the crowds of the market once again, the throng already substantially larger despite him only having been gone for a handful of minutes. People pay far less attention to him now that he’s no longer carrying a sniper rifle nearly as tall as him, and Changbin relishes in his newfound anonymity. 

He passes the old woman who runs a tiny textile store and who sold him his first shotgun pistol and offers her a pleasant nod. She gives a curt wave in reply and returns to folding some sort of shawl with motions so quick and precise she might as well be performing surgery, entirely absorbed in her work. 

Every person in Miroh is battle-hardened, in a way, despite the majority having never seen actual combat. It comes from a different kind of fight- of never knowing where your next meal will come from, of living in constant fear of a government that sees every second of your struggle and yet refuses to help ease it. Honestly, they're far braver than Changbin. For most of these people, death would be a relief, yet they continue to soldier on, living and loving and fighting for sometimes no reason at all. 

Changbin is lucky in that respect- he has something to fight for, a reason to wake up every morning. Seven reasons, to be specific. While everyone else has adjusted with frightening ease to their newfound freedom, Changbin is a little slower, a little less sure of how to live without someone telling him what to do every second of his day. Despite it being a miserable existence, it was all he knew for the vast majority of his life; Seo Changbin, soldier, was not meant to make choices or think for himself, so he never learned how. 

So, despite there being no one in Miroh to give him orders, Changbin has found it helps to have goals. Little ones - _kill Hwang Junhee today, pick up a new book for Seungmin, turn the lights out in the back room before you leave-_ and bigger ones, things that shape his every thought and choice. _Stay alive. Keep away from the District. Protect your team no matter the cost._

It’s that last goal that really drives Changbin’s very being, the one that wakes him up in the mornings and gets him through his day better than even his conditioning ever could. His teammates need him and he needs them, and until there comes a day where that’s no longer true, Changbin will keep living just like this. 

The underground subway station that leads back to the bus is as echoey and dark as it always is, and despite being outside of Miroh’s immediate jurisdiction, he keeps his mask on- one can never be too careful, even in a place as secure and isolated as this one. His boots resound against the tiles of the floor as he walks, not slowing in the slightest even upon crossing the tunnel’s bridge, freshly repaired from last week’s splintering of yet another piece of its wood. 

From there, it’s not long until he makes it home, the sight of their bus a more than welcome one after such a demanding contract. Quietly, so as not to wake up anyone else, Changbin pulls open one door, slowing at the spot where he knows it creaks, and slips inside. To his surprise, he’s come back early enough that even Jeongin, their earliest riser, is still fast asleep. 

Peering around the bus and taking in the mess that is his teammates at current, sprawled carelessly across the space and each other, Changbin searches for a spot he can get to that won’t wake anyone else in the process. He finally finds one towards the very back of the bus, and after some very careful sneaking past his sleeping unit, he finally lets himself melt into the floor, muscles liquefying upon finally receiving proper rest for the first time in days. Changbin doesn’t think he could move right now even if he wanted to- and he very, very much doesn’t.

Hyunjin is collapsed next to him, arms splayed at an angle that looks positively painful, hair mussed and expression lax in sleep. He’s cute, soft-looking in a way he hasn’t let himself be often lately, and a smile finds its way to Changbin’s lips unconsciously at the sight before him. Somehow he musters up the strength to lift an arm and brush Hyunjin’s hair away from his face, careful not to awaken him by accident. 

He shifts in his sleep anyway, mumbling something incoherent, but all he ends up doing is slinging an arm over Changbin’s waist, tugging him closer so he can snuggle into his teammate properly. Hyunjin’s presence is deliciously warm and familiar, and Changbin feels some knot deep in his chest automatically relax in response to the contact. At the end of the day, no matter how many contracts he takes, no matter how much blood gets on his hands, the only thing he really cares about is his team. His family. 

With the seven people he cares about most in the world surrounding him, he sleeps. 

  
  


  
  


_The world is white again._

_So few things in Miroh are truly white- even District buildings, cleaned and painted often as they are, soak up the soot and general rot of the city faster than they can be maintained._

_But this is not Miroh. It’s the compound again, bleached and choking, and Changbin is_ trapped. _He races through the hallways, looking for the one place he knows will be safe, but every corner he turns seems to only lead him further away from his destination. There’s something behind him, he can_ feel _it, and if he stops moving for so much as a second it will certainly catch and kill him._

_He’s growing tired now, his legs threatening to give out, his vision blurring and melting the compound into one infinite white blob, until he turns a corner and-_

_There! The door to the Unit Nine dorm room is just in front of him, and Changbin yanks it open, slips into the room, and slams it shut, pressing his back up against the door in equal parts exhaustion and fear._

_He lets out a sigh so immense it feels like his lungs are collapsing inside of his ribcage and glances at his surroundings. There, sitting each on their own bunk beds, are his teammates, bodies still and expressions stony. Even just the sight of them calms Changbin’s racing heart, and he can’t help but smile._

_“Thank goodness,” he sighs, taking a step forward. “Come on, we have to go-”_

_No one moves. No one so much as blinks, twitches, or breathes. That’s the first clue something is horribly, horribly wrong. The second is when Changbin realizes no one is sitting together. Unit Nine never spends more than a moment apart from each other if they can help it._

_There’s an awful, awful sort of terror creeping up the back of Changbin’s spine, nipping at him with an almost painful sort of intensity as it whispers for him to_ run _. But he can’t, he won’t- no matter what’s happened to his teammates, he would never leave them behind._

_There’s a_ bang _on the door behind him that sounds alarmingly like a gunshot and Changbin starts at the sound, whirling around to look at the door. It’s still closed, but judging by the way it rattles in its frame, it won’t be for long. If they’re going to get out, it has to be now._

_He turns back around, a fresh urgency in his movements, only to find his teammates have moves to stand in front of him. Felix is at their head, and Changbin realizes with rapidly-dawning horror that his dark eyes are little more than empty pits. He’s a doll made up to look like Felix, svelte and freckled and all sharp-yet-delicate lines, but with no soul inside of him._

_Changbin can’t breathe. He’s too late. They’ve gotten his unit and there’s nothing he can do to save them. His one source of comfort in the world, his one safe place, lost-_

Changbin wakes up with a sharp gasp, jolting back into consciousness like he’s been electrocuted. The floor beneath him is icy cold, a sure sign he’s alone. Logically, he knows it’s because Hyunjin has work today, and he’ll likely be back in a few hours, but for a terrifying moment all he sees is the white walls of the compound and the only thought that streaks through his muddled brain is _he’s gone he’s dead they’re all dead-_

“Morning,” Minho says to him through a yawn. 

Changbin flinches. He rakes his gaze up and down Minho’s body for an uncomfortably long moment, taking in his sleep-mussed clothes, his ruffled hair, his puffy eyes. His gaze is dark but clear, glowing with some hypnotizing internal light in the way it always seems to. Not glassy, not empty, not dead. Some of the tension drains from Changbin’s shoulders.

“Are you okay?” Minho is staring at him, concern obvious, and Changbin wonders how he must look. Like a corpse, maybe, or with the same deadness to his eyes as his teammates in his dream.

“Fine,” he manages. The look Minho gives him is decidedly disbelieving, but Changbin really must look terrible today, because he ignores the obvious lie and mercifully switches to another topic. 

“Have you eaten?”

Changbin tries to remember the last time he had a meal and comes up empty. Generally when he’s away from home he tends to forget, too singularly focused on whatever job he’s working and never with anyone around to cook for him or forcibly prod him into snacking occasionally. 

“...No,” he admits, averting his gaze to hide from the disappointed glare he’s surely receiving.

Minho lets out a displeased huff. “Do we need to pack you meals when you go on jobs?” While there’s a sarcastic lilt to his voice that makes it clear he’s teasing, there’s also a sharp, determined gleam in his eyes that suggests he might end up doing just that if Changbin keeps his bad habits up. 

Changbin doesn’t have the heart to tell him they’d never get eaten- anything that’s not strictly necessary for a contract tends to get lost or thrown away almost immediately. “I’ll work on it,” he says, a peace offering, and Minho acquiesces. A moment later, a can of fruit is chucked at him, which Changbin catches reflexively, and a slightly warped metal spoon follows soon after. As if cued by the presence of food, his stomach growls, and he immediately digs in. 

Seeming to recognize Changbin’s need for space today, Minho simply sits down next to him and periodically steals pieces of fruit from his can while he eats. Their shoulders brush, the gentle contact warm and grounding, but Minho doesn’t try for conversation. Changbin almost wants him to, wishes he’d ramble on about nothing in the way Jisung likes to do as a distraction, but, alas, he’s left with only his own thoughts for company. 

Saying the dreams are a new development would be a lie. Changbin’s been having nightmares in some form or another almost every night since they’d first escaped from District control- it’s been over three months, now, and the problem has only gotten worse as time has gone on. 

Night terrors are an unfamiliar experience for Changbin; he never dreamed back at the compound. Changbin never did much of anything back at the compound, really, beyond what he was ordered to. While it was by no means a good existence, it was at least a simple one. There was no pressure to make his own choices, no need to worry about the consequences of making bad ones. While he certainly doesn’t _prefer_ being a brainwashed soldier to what he is now, there were admittedly some parts of being a District puppet that were less stressful than living as an independent person. 

(But only a few meaningless things, of course- Changbin would rather die than _ever_ be under District control again.) 

This nightmare has been an irritatingly persistent one, switching members and scenarios every night but always remaining the same in essence. Sometimes he walks in on the bodies of his unit, fresh blood still dripping from their heads where they’ve been shot. Other nights they’re the ones after him, lost to their conditioning and under the District’s power once more. Every time it always ends the same- with Changbin jerking awake, heart in his throat and anxiety crackling in his veins like liquid fire until he can see all of his teammates and make sure they’re safe. 

It’s a problem, to say the absolute least. 

As a mercenary, Changbin is used to functioning on very little amounts of sleep, but that only works so long as he gets plenty of rest between his kills. Sleep deprivation leads to mistakes, and mistakes lead to lost jobs- or, worse, they lead to Changbin never coming home at all. He’s only just started living a proper life, and he’d really rather not lose it over something so easily preventable. 

And besides, if these dreams keep up for much longer, Changbin is going to get so anxious and clingy he won’t be able to function at all. He’s already starting to lose hours to his worry, tailoring his schedule around when his teammates will be home every day regardless of the inconvenience it puts on him. Most of his contract negotiations occur at night, and lately he’s been scheduling them later and later to make sure he has to leave only after he sees all of his members make it home safely. 

Changbin lets his head drop onto Minho’s shoulder as he thinks, and his neck audibly pops as he does so, a punishment for staying so still for so long earlier. Minho lets out a soft huff of laughter before gently resting his own head atop Changbin’s, and the latter’s lips twitch up subconsciously at the action. 

It’s clear by now that he needs some kind of help, but who can Changbin even go to for something like this? It’s not like a bullet hole or a dislocated shoulder, which he can just get patched up at the nearest independent clinic. This is something deeper, an impossibly old wound still festering in the darkest recesses of his mind, and he knows no doctor can fix it for him. Changbin needs something else- but what?

He absolutely cannot go to Chan. Chan does so much for them already, never asking for anything in return, and Changbin refuses to burden him with something else, not when he hasn’t tried his best to solve it himself first. The same goes for the rest of his unit- they’ve already handled his episodes so graciously in the past, and asking them to help him _yet again_ with an issue they’ve all had no trouble getting over would be too much. They have enough to deal with without worrying about him. 

So, instead, Changbin decides to go to the one person beyond Chan he knows with a broad knowledge of the world beyond the District. 

“You’re having trouble sleeping?” Jae asks cheerfully when Changbin hunts him down between customers and quietly explains his problem. “So’s half of Miroh. I have just the thing you need.”

Changbin waits with a tentative sort of eagerness as Jae ducks down behind his counter, digging through boxes, until-

“Found it!” Jae crows, and slams a tiny white bottle down onto the counter. “Best non-District pharmaceutical sleep aid money can buy.”

Changbin picks the bottle up to inspect it, popping open its top and peering inside. An innocuous-enough mass of small white pills stare back at him. 

“It’s a drug?” he asks, anxiety bubbling in his gut. He hasn’t taken drugs since- well, since he’d gotten here, and he has no intention of breaking that streak for anything less than truly life-threatening circumstances.

Jae glances at him curiously. “Yeah? What did you think it was gonna be?”

Changbin shakes his head furiously. “I don’t want it, that’s okay.” 

“Are you su-” Jae begins, head tilted in confusion, but another vicious head shake from Changbin has him closing his mouth. 

“Alright,” he says uncertainly. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.” 

Hurriedly, Changbin thanks him and slips off deeper into the market, desperate to get the feeling of Jae’s questioning gaze off his back. 

Fuck. He’ll have to get this solved another way, it seems. 

With nothing to really do for a while, and knowing it’s at least a few more hours before anyone else will go home, he sets about wandering aimlessly, losing himself in the crowds. He’s got half a mind to grab something to eat -those three days without food are finally catching up to him- and his feet trace the familiar path for him, gradually bringing him closer to the section of the market where the food stalls are, their riot of smells near-tangible in their intensity. 

The eight of them spend far too much time at the market. To be fair, it’s one of the few places in Miroh where they can go as a collective without having to worry about the District’s prying eyes, but still, sometimes Changbin wonders if Jae, who at least one of them visits nearly every day, isn’t a little sick of all of them by now. 

If he is, he does an excellent job of hiding it. Jae has a new chore for them to do almost every time they show up, tossing them credit chips worth far too much for the work they’re doing when they feel up to the task and offering tea and a nice place to rest whenever they aren’t. He’s also kind enough to let Minho -apparently the best assistant he’s ever had and now the entire market’s darling- go on break whenever one of his teammates shows up, a privilege they use liberally whenever someone decides they miss him. 

6-Days and the market is their home away from home, a place that's greatest gift is not in its size or convenience but instead in its apathy. As long as they aren't causing trouble, no one in the market could care any less about the presence of a few runaway soldiers. Most of the shopkeepers are even quite friendly, gladly offering tips and secrets about surviving in Miroh whenever one of them stops by to browse. 

While they take advantage of what they’ve been given, they’re also all incredibly careful not to abuse their chance. They’re quiet, almost over-polite in most situations, and they take great pains to never do anything that might jeopardize the safety of the market. Changbin knows no one in his unit would ever forgive themselves if they were to do something that might lead to its downfall. 

After a moment of deliberation in front of the numerous food stalls, all of them crowded and advertising their menus with the brightest signs possible, Changbin steps into the long line for his unit’s favorite takeout noodle shop. Maybe he’ll bring everyone home dinner tonight- it’s been days since he’s talked to most of his teammates, after all, and saying he’s missed them would be an understatement. 

It’s alright, though- he’ll be back with them again soon enough. 

  
  


“Hey, you’re still looking for a proper place to stay, right?” 

Changbin turns to look at Jae from where he’s browsing the produce stand next to 6-Days with Jeongin and Felix. They’re not really here for shopping -Seungmin and Hyunjin had taken care of that yesterday- but they need to kill time while Chan picks up some delivery deeper in the market. 

Jae has been kind enough to pretend Changbin’s last solo market visit didn’t happen, something he’s impossibly grateful for. To thank him, he’s been popping in more often, helping out with deliveries and chores where he can. He used to try and refuse payment, but after Jae resorted to reverse-pickpocketing him his compensation for a delivery, Changbin has since given up. Some things aren’t worth resisting- especially not when Jae is one of the most impressively stubborn people he’s ever met, and he doesn’t put it past him to go even further than pickpocketing had Changbin refused to acquiesce. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

There’s an abandoned building a couple blocks over that’s about to go up for sale,” Jae tells him, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “You might want to go snap it up while you can.”

Jeongin puts down the tomato he’d been examining and glances at Jae curiously. “How do you know that?”

“And where is it?” Felix chimes in, abandoning the stand entirely to stand in front of 6-Days. The woman running the store huffs at the loss of her potential customers, but Jae pays her no mind. 

“It’s down near Honey Park, if you know where that is,” he begins, looking vaguely overwhelmed by the rapid-fire questions. “And it’s about to hit its inoccupancy limit in like a week.”

“Its what?” Changbin asks. 

“If you don’t touch a piece of property you own for six months, it automatically goes up for sale at a really low price. That’s how we got this building,” Jae explains, gesturing to the market around them. He laughs. “Actually, we did a little more than that- this _was_ District property, but they couldn’t get into it for six months a few years back because of some armed resistance, so, hey, it’s ours now.”

Jae grins devilishly at them until everyone’s eyes widen in comprehension and Felix starts laughing. 

“That’s really cool,” Jeongin comments, glancing around the market with a newfound appreciation. 

“The inoccupancy system sounds nice, too,” Changbin hums. It seems to be just a Miroh thing- in some of the smaller nearby towns he’s been to on jobs, homelessness is rampant because of too-high rent costs. Sometimes he’ll see homeless encampments set up in front of signs advertising shiny new apartments, an ironic sort of juxtaposition he can’t find any humor in. 

“Yeah, until you realize it only exists so the government can take debtor’s property,” Jae tells him nonchalantly, a bitter undertone seeping into his words. 

“Wait, is the place you mentioned-” Felix begins, stricken. 

Jae shakes his head. “Nah, that one was owned by a company that went under a few months back. You’re not stealing from anyone by going for it.”

“It was supposed to be a restaurant, I think?” he continues. “I don’t really know. They never got very far with it- it was too ritzy of a place for anyone around here. Pretty, though.” 

“Is it big enough for all of us?” Jeongin asks. 

“And is it expensive?” Changbin adds. They’ve been trying to save up for a place of their own for a while now, of course, but making any substantial living in a city like Miroh is a challenge at the best of times. 

Jae laughs. “Go check out the listing yourselves,” he tells them. “There’s a sign up on the entrance with an asking price. And if you want to see inside, I’m sure there’s an unlocked window somewhere.”

“What are we breaking into?” Chan asks from where he’s appeared behind them, an unidentifiable box held tight in his hands. Knowing Chan, it could be anything from a crate of preserves to a bomb.

“Our new home,” Jeongin announces, smiling so brightly no one has the heart to tell him differently. 

“I’ll go get everyone else!” Felix announces, practically bouncing with excitement, and he’s off like a shot before anyone can so much as open their mouths. 

“Have fun,” Jae tells them, amusement clear in his voice. 

Chan laughs brightly in reply, moving to twine his hands with Changbin’s and Jeongin’s. “We will!”

  
  


  
  
  


Honey Park is an unexpectedly pretty place, in a chaotic sort of way. As unmanaged as everything else is in the slums of Miroh, it’s a mess of overgrown plants and rusted-over playground equipment, but there’s a wild sort of beauty to it. 

Changbin appreciates said scenery slightly less when he’s pricked by a thorn for the fifth time in as many minutes, but it’s a nice enough thought nevertheless. The rest of his team seems less bothered, at least- in fact, Seungmin looks positively delighted, running his hands gently across every plant he passes and marvelling at the texture. Green spaces in Miroh are a true rarity, yet even now, as fall has begun to wither the plants and bring an icy tang to the air, the life in the park stubbornly clings to its dominion. 

The building for sale looms ahead of them, a cinderblock rectangle jutting up out of the wild grasses, and Changbin’s only thought upon looking at it is how it seems fairly easy to defend. There’s a massive tarp covering the roof, interestingly, its dirty, navy blue fabric fluttering in the breeze whistling through the higher parts of the buildings. Hopefully it’s not covering up a hole- for all their talents, the eight of them don’t know the first thing about construction. 

The front door is locked, but it’s nothing to Jeongin, who simply pulls a bobby pin out of his hair, kneels down, and sets to work. In under twenty seconds the door springs open, and he scoffs as he stands back up. “Easy.” 

He holds the door open for the rest of his team with a smile, ushering them in like he owns the place, and Changbin eagerly follows his teammates into their -potential- new home. 

The building is divided into two sections- a lower and upper floor. The bottom floor was clearly meant to have been a restaurant, with the bones of bathroom stalls, sinks, and even showers clustered along one edge of the massive space, no walls cordoning any of it off into separate rooms. Directly adjacent to it is what might have once been the beginnings of a kitchen, but is now mostly a collection of tarnished metal cabinets, guarded by a massive steel countertop caked with dust. 

Size-wise, it makes their bus look like a cardboard box in comparison. They haven’t even seen the top floor yet. 

For a moment, all the eight of them can do is stare, taking in the truly massive space. What would they even do with a place this large? Honestly, it’s probably easier to list the things they _couldn’t_ do- there’s enough room here for each of them to have a personal area the size of their bus, and they’d still have plenty of space left over. 

“It’s nice,” Minho decides, glancing around the dingy room like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “I like it.”

“There’s so much space,” Chan says, clearly awestruck. “We could do so much here.” Taking a step forward, his head darts back and forth as he takes in every inch of the room, and Changbin can practically see him plotting where they’ll put their things after they’ve moved in. 

“Hey, there’s an echo,” Seungmin comments, and sure enough, his voice reverberates against the concrete walls and bounces off the floor as he speaks. 

“Woah!” Jisung cries, and from there the conversation devolves into a contest of who can make the walls ring the loudest with their shouting. Jeongin seems to have an early lead with his impressively horrific on-demand screeching, but then Jisung sings a note so high and so loud Changbin swears he can see the windows shake and is promptly declared the winner. 

They make their way up a discreet flight of wooden stairs to the second floor next, holding hands and gripping wrists in one long chain to ensure everyone keeps their balance.

It’s a plain space, entirely unfurnished, with plain white walls and an unvarnished hardwood floor the color of syrup. All in all, it’s generally unremarkable and- 

_Oh._

The tarp from earlier was covering up an entire roof made of glass, its form gently curving and supported by intricate curls of metal latticework- plus, thanks to the covering, it’s perfectly clean despite having been left abandoned for months. 

_Ritzy_ , Jae had called it. _Beautiful,_ Changbin thinks. 

“We could see the sun every day,” Felix says faintly, head tilted so far back to look at the skylight it looks near-grotesque. For a moment, no one does anything but nod, too busy staring up at the gorgeous sight above them to do anything more than offer soft sounds of awe. 

“We need to buy this place,” Hyunjin decides. 

Changbin nods. “This would be a perfect home for us.”

It’s only when they’re on the way out, finally having dragged themselves away from their gawking, when Seungmin finally remembers the most important part of this whole excursion. “We need to check the listing before we actually buy anything,” he laughs, nearly skipping over to the small holographic sign with details about the building and its price.

“Let’s see how much we need to set aside,” Chan says, smiling. 

“What’s it say?” Jeongin questions excitedly.

Seungmin doesn’t answer for a long moment. He’s gone entirely still in front of the screen, fingers frozen just above it like he’s scared to touch the hologram. Changbin feels the grin slip further off of his face with every second the silence stretches. 

“What does it say?” Hyunjin repeats at last, when the tension grows unbearable.

Seungmin turns to look at them, expression absolutely crushed. “It’s too much,” he says quietly. “Way too much.”

The loss aches in a way Changbin hadn’t expected. Having everything they’ve been looking for dangled right in front of them with no feasible way to reach it is positively painful, no matter how short of a time they’d gotten to experience it for. 

“So, did you end up deciding anything on that place I told you about?” Jae asks the next time he sees him, an excited grin on his lips that simply squeezes the vice around Changbin’s heart a little tighter. 

Changbin sighs. “It’s too expensive for us.”

Jae pauses, considering. “By how much?”

“No.” Changbin shakes his head. “We don’t need you to give us anything.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” Jae says airily. “I know you don’t want any charity.”

A pause. “By the way, are you going to need that bus of yours after you move?”

“I just said we aren’t going to-” Oh. _Oh_. He’d have to talk to everyone else about it, but- “I don’t think so.”

“And how much are you short on the building?” Jae prompts with a sunny grin. 

“About twenty thousand credits,” Changbin answers dutifully, anticipation beginning to smolder in his bones. 

“I’ll give you twenty-five grand for it,” Jae offers. “Take it or leave it.” 

“I should ask-” Changbin rushes out, and Jae grins at him. 

“Of course,” he says. “Take your time.”

Changbin doesn’t, instead rushing out of the market and bolting down the crowded streets of Miroh like the entire District military is behind him. 

“The bus,” Changbin pants several minutes later, jerking the door of said vehicle open with a screech of plastic and stumbling up the stairs. 

“What about it?” Minho asks from where he’s eating an apple and idly flipping through one of Seungmin’s novels. 

“If we sell it to Jae, we can get the building,” Changbin bursts out before doubling over, wheezing. 

Minho’s eyes widen. “Are you sure? What would he pay us?”

Changbin has to take a minute before replying -he’s much better suited to sitting stock still on rooftops for hours than he is distance sprinting- as Minho waits with barely-concealed anticipation. “Twenty-five grand,” he answers at last. 

“That’s more than enough,” Minho breathes, a smile breaking out across his face like the rising sun as he reaches the same conclusion Changbin had. 

“Do you think we could-?”

“When does Jae need the bus by?” Minho asks.

Changbin pauses to think and promptly realizes he has no idea. Maybe he should’ve stuck around a little longer to ask more questions. He tells this to Minho, who simply laughs fondly. 

“It’ll probably be fine. If he pays us in advance, we can buy the building the second it goes up for sale.”

It takes another exhausting sprint to and from to the market, but by the time the rest of his teammates are home, Jae has paid them in advance for their bus and the eight of them have worked out a tentative moving schedule. It’s exhilarating beyond belief to think that soon enough they’ll really have a place all their own, and as such, the energy in the bus is near-palpable. 

Hyunjin, who’s taken up casual vandalism in Miroh in the way a fish takes to water, insists that they carve their names into the bus before they give it up. “It’s ours even if we don’t own it,” he explains cheerily, digging the blade of his pocket knife into the metal of a seat with an admirable ease. 

Jisung, who’s developed an equal affinity for lawbreaking- his crime of choice is stealing anything not nailed down from District-owned businesses, which has led to him coming home with everything from credit cards to a hacked biometric key for an _actual tank_ (which he was unfortunately not allowed to keep)- grins, sharklike, and immediately sets to work next to him. 

Changbin thinks about all of the screens he’s seen painted over with wildly inappropriate phrases on them recently, all of the District recruiting posters and statues he’s seen vandalized so their eyes drip oil and their hands weep blood. He thinks about the way he sees people on the street privately smile at the sight when they think no one is looking, and how Hyunjin could simply walk into the market holding a can of spray paint and he’d probably get a standing ovation; his teammates have started a tiny revolution all on their own. 

Then he thinks about the concept of owning things, how it’s something he’s only understood for three months; how before that, he hadn’t even had possession of his own mind. 

Kneeling down next to Hyunjin, he pulls his own knife out of his boot and starts to carve. 

They pop into the market one last time as a collective later that night, just to figure out small details like where Jae wants them to drop off the bus when it’s time to give it up. Despite the market technically being open twenty-four hours a day, most of its shopkeepers have closed up for the night, giving the place an eerie sort of air. It’s downright strange to see the market, a place synonymous with constant bustle and life, so quiet and dark- the sight is almost unnerving.

“Is there anything else you need, while you’re here?” Jae asks, when they’ve figured everything out. Changbin hasn’t really been paying attention to the conversation; he doesn’t need to, not when Seungmin has Jae’s every word memorized and Chan will surely relay it all to them again later. 

Seungmin pauses for a second, likely doing a mental inventory of everything in their possession. 

“Yes,” he says at last. “We need a lot of things.”

“Furniture, for one,” Jeongin cuts in.

Chan nods. “Anything we’d need in a standard house.”

Jae hums in understanding. “Well,” he says, “you’ve come to the right place. 6-Days sells the best furniture in the market, in my entirely unbiased opinion.”

He then pulls out a small holographic tablet and shows them their options. While Jae doesn’t have most of his furniture on hand, he’s more than happy to let them see everything he can order in from elsewhere. 

They run into their first problem when they’re choosing beds. While Jae has a decent selection, there’s nothing that gives them the same space and freedom to cuddle with everyone else in the way the bus does. The thought of being separated again every night like they were in the compound is an unthinkable one, a concession Changbin can’t imagine making after all this time. 

Jae seems to notice their concern and politely asks what’s wrong, voice in full customer service mode. 

Seungmin shows him the tablet screen and its collection of beds. “Do you have anything bigger?” he asks earnestly. “We like to sleep together.”

Jae stares. 

“Oh-kay,” he says slowly. “Not sure I needed to know _that_ , but Wheein owes me twenty credits now.”

Poor Seungmin simply blinks at him, clearly lost, and Jae has to cover his mouth to stop himself from laughing. 

“I’m not sure anything there’s a big enough bed out there for what you need,” he murmurs to himself, taking the tablet back from Seungmin and tapping something into it. “You’d need a damn trampoline to hold all eight of you-” 

A pause. Jae looks back up at them, smirking. “Actually, that might not be such a bad idea.” 

“What’s a trampoline?” Felix asks.

“You’ll find out,” Jae grins. 

Trampolines, apparently, are a type of play equipment decidedly not meant to be used as beds, but when Changbin gets to lay down on the one Jae ends up “borrowing” from another shopkeeper for a demonstration, he finds it’s somehow more comfortable than the bunks back at the compound. 

The rest of his unit seems to think the same, if the delighted noises they make as they collapse onto it are any indication. The material they’re lying on is _bouncy,_ too, and the eight of them spend far too much time exploring the novelty of being able to shoot themselves high up into the sky with a simple jump. 

Jae patiently watches them the whole time, smiling at their antics. “If you put some blankets on it, it’ll be perfect to sleep on,” he calls to them. 

“We’ll take it,” Chan huffs from where he’s bouncing as high as he can, in fierce competition with Jeongin and Felix. 

Changbin flops down on the trampoline with his limbs outstretched and promptly sends Felix so high up he screeches in surprise. Upon his messy landing, limbs splaying everywhere, Felix ducks his way through the rest of his teammates and tackles Changbin, shaking his shoulders and squawking about how he’d just made him lose. 

All Changbin can do is laugh, and it feels a lot like the dawn of something wonderful.

  
  


Moving, as it turns out, is far more work than Changbin expected. They have to pack everything they own up and take it to the building, and on top of all that, they have to find enough furniture to fill up the massive space they’re now in possession of- and all on an absolutely tiny budget with minimal outside assistance. 

Changbin is mostly sure that if he wasn’t already incredibly strong from a lifetime of combat training, he’d definitely be gaining a few pounds of muscle from all of the carrying he’s had to do lately. Who knew furniture could be so damn _heavy?_

Today they’re in Jae’s back room, browsing through what he affectionately calls his “crap corner”- in other words, things not quite nice enough to sell but still not worth scrapping for parts. 

Chan and Jeongin are taking the tarp off of their building today, while Felix, Seungmin, and Hyunjin are packing up the last of their nonessential items to be taken over to their new home tomorrow. Changbin, along with Minho and Jisung, has been given a short list of remaining furniture pieces and other odds and ends to try and grab today. 

Poking through Jae’s collection of junk, which for some reason seems to be almost forty percent busted lamps of varying sizes, Changbin can already tell they won’t be very successful in their search. Unless there’s a second, better Crap Corner hiding behind this one, or unless they decide they’d like to furnish their new home with a truly absurd amount of lamps, this trip will likely be a short one. 

Jae can’t be there for long, seeing as he has a shop to run, but hangs around for a few minutes to explain some of the less-visible issues with a couple of their choices. The couch Minho asks about, buried beneath a massive collection of ancient computer hardware, has some busted springs that make it far too soft on one side. The mini-fridge Jisung pokes at is apparently “totally broken and leaks oil fucking everywhere.”

They end up deciding to take the couch anyway, and Jae, wonderful person that he is, offers to help them move some of the tech covering its every surface. As they work, the four of them chat idly about nothing in particular- new District policing measures, the delicious kebabs one of the food vendors just started selling. 

“I like your necklace,” Minho comments at one point as he sets the cracked remains of a holographic tablet to the ground. 

Changbin glances at it. It’s simple enough, a slender golden rope chain with a gold ring threaded through it, tarnished in a way that suggests Jae wears it often. 

Jae blinks at him in confusion for a moment, then glances down at his chest. Catching sight of the necklace, his eyes light up in understanding and he looks back at Jisung. “Oh, right! I forgot about that. Normally I keep it hidden, but I guess it doesn’t really matter if you know I’m married.”

“You’re married?” Jisung asks rather redundantly. 

Marriage is- what, again? Changbin vaguely remembers seeing a couple -a woman, a man, smiling at each other with bright fondness- who someone in the market had mentioned were newly married. It’s a kind of romantic relationship, right?

But Changbin has never seen anyone near Jae that he might be in a relationship with- he flirts with everyone like his life depends on it and never shies away from physical contact, yet there’s no one Changbin has seen with him that especially sticks out. 

“Yeah, I’ve been married for,” -Jae pauses to count- “six years now.” He snickers at the matching expressions of shock on their faces. 

“To who?” Changbin asks. 

At the innocuous question, some light in Jae’s eyes stutters and dies. While nothing in his outward expression changes, it’s as though Jae’s very colors have become more muted, like the radiant energy that shines through in everything he does has been siphoned away in the blink of an eye. 

“His name is Brian,” Jae tells them softly, voice sweeter than Changbin has ever heard it. “He’s- he’s not here right now.” 

The three of them exchange glances, and Jisung finally asks the obvious question. “Where is he?”

“In sector eight, Levanter, there’s a debtors’ prison,” Jae says slowly. He speaks as if he’s reciting something in a foreign language- his words are careful, well-pronounced, and entirely depthless, poetry with no underlying meaning. “Brian’s been there for the past four years.”

“Oh, Jae,” Minho whispers.

“I miss him every day,” Jae says quietly, “and in everything that I do.”

Changbin had never imagined that someone like Jae, all brightness and noise and boundless optimism only barely tempered by the cynicism one needs to survive in Miroh, could ever be carrying so profound a weight as this. It’s a sobering, almost painful thought. 

“Is there anything we can do?” Changbin asks. 

Jae laughs sourly. “Not unless you can raise me two million credits.”

“Two _million_?” Jisung questions. “How did he-?”

“Not him,” Jae corrects immediately, voice sharp. “Bri didn’t do anything wrong beyond getting a little behind on his rent payments.” 

He pauses for a moment and sighs, running a hand through his hair, and for the first time he looks truly older than Changbin, exhausted and saddled with far too much for far too long. “The District likes to buy people’s debts,” he explains. “It’s an easy way to keep your house or whatever you need for an extra couple of months, but the interest rates are crushing. And the moment you can’t pay anymore, they haul you off. Free prison labor.”

Changbin stares in horror. Having witnessed so much District cruelty already, he shouldn’t be surprised, but this is yet another outrage. 

“They can’t do that,” Minho says immediately, all righteous anger and frustration. 

“Who’s going to stop them?” Jae points out, lips twisting up in an expression that could in no world be called a smile. 

Jisung’s eyes widen for a brief moment before something in his expression falls. “Can’t you do anything about it?” he asks, almost desperate. 

“The only way I can get him back is to buy him out of prison,” Jae says. “That’s what 6-Days is for.”

Jae is such a good shopkeeper that Changbin had always half-assumed he’d been born behind a sales counter, a twinkle in his eye and a bargain on his lips. But maybe that skill was borne more out of desperation than any genuine passion for his work. Maybe that’s why he’s so kind, why his prices are always so fair compared to so many others in the market. 

“But you-” Minho says slowly, with a dawning sort of distress on his face, “You’ve given us so much for free.”

Jae laughs at that, the sound musical and sad all at once. “Bri would slap me if he saw me ignoring people who so obviously needed help,” he says. “A few supplies and some odd jobs aren’t a big deal, not when you needed them so badly and I have so much to spare.”

Changbin is already calculating mentally how much of his earnings he can spare to pay Jae back. If he takes a of couple extra contracts, maybe-

“We’ll repay you,” Jisung says, insistent. “We’ll do whatever you need so you can get him back.”

Changbin nods. “We want to help.” 

The smile Jae offers them is equal parts fondness and cynicism, the look of someone who’s been fighting a war for so long they’ve forgotten winning is possible. “That’s kind of you,” he tells them, “but you don’t have to do anything. I have it handled.” 

“Now go on,” he says, a clear dismissal. “Take whatever you need and go be with your family.”

Before they can do anything else, Jae disappears, presumably heading back downstairs to 6-Days. The door swings shut behind him with a _bang_ harsh enough to make Jisung jump. 

The three of them exchange glances, frowning, but no one moves to follow him. While Jae might be their only real friend in Miroh, there’s a vast difference between being on casual good terms with someone and prying for information on their shattered marriage. It’s a gap Changbin doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to bridge, no matter how much he may want to- he’s still not great with social interaction. Being profoundly, instinctively close with the only people you’ve known for the majority of your life is wonderfully convenient when it comes to most things, but it didn’t teach him much in the way of making friends. 

“I’ll check on him later,” Minho says quietly, still staring at the spot where Jae had been. 

“Let’s get back to work then, shall we?” Jisung suggests, a strained sort of cheer in his voice. “I want to beat the others home, and we’ve got a lot to move.”

“Yeah,” Changbin murmurs quietly. 

The rest of the work passes in silence. 

  
  


Despite being plagued by near-constant nightmares, insomnia is a foreign experience to Changbin. Falling asleep has never been the problem- staying unconscious and undisturbed through the night is what he’s always struggled with. Tonight, however, his mind remains stubbornly alert, racing through memories of the day and future responsibilities so quickly he can barely keep up. They’re moving tomorrow, and the anticipation of it all is almost too much to bear. 

After a couple of hours spent trying and failing to fall unconscious for the night, Changbin decides to go outside. It’s a strangely temperate evening, a last gasp of summer in the face of the unrelenting march of the oncoming winter, and it seems a waste not to enjoy what he can of it. 

There’s a ladder propped up against the side of the bus now, stolen by Hyunjin at Jisung‘s request, and though it’s rickety and made from what might be the loudest metal on the planet, Changbin scales it silently. The moment he peeks his head over the top of the bus, though, he catches sight of a figure sitting cross-legged on the roof, head tilted skyward. Changbin freezes, but before he can decide whether or not to scuttle back down into the bus and leave his teammate undisturbed, the decision is made for him.

“Come on up, Bin,” Chan calls, twisting his head around just enough for Changbin to catch a glimpse of glittering blue eyes and the faintest hint of a smile. 

“I don’t want to bother you,” Changbin replies, but he’s already moving to climb up the rest of the ladder. He can’t tell if it’s out of some unshakable, subconscious need to follow orders or simply the way Chan makes him feel- comfortable, sun-kissed, _cared for_ in a way he craves. 

“You never bother me,” Chan tells him, and something in Changbin’s heart stutters. He doesn’t sit down too close to his leader out of respect for the privacy he’d likely come up here for, but he does come near enough that their knees brush and their elbows are only a hair's-breadth apart. 

There’s silence for a moment, as Chan resumes staring at the sky and Changbin makes himself comfortable. He could almost fall asleep up here, just on the pleasant side of chilly and with Chan by his side, but his mind is far too alert, entirely unwilling to even consider resting. 

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Chan hums after a while. 

Changbin nods. As soulless and festering as Miroh is up close, from a distance it glows like a miniature star, beautiful and buzzing with life even at night. 

“I learned a new word today,” he continues, excitement creeping into his voice. “Ethereal.”

“What does it mean?” Changbin asks dutifully. Normally Seungmin and Felix are the ones rushing home with newly-acquired tidbits of knowledge to share, but Chan’s enthusiasm for the little things he discovers is impossibly charming whenever it surfaces. 

Chan pauses for a moment, thinking. “It’s something so beautiful it could come from paradise.” Then, sensing Changbin’s confusion at the concept, he adds, “It’s like saying something is perfectly delicate and beautiful. Too good for the world.” 

“Do you think Miroh is ethereal?” he asks. He can kind of see it- the way the city shines in the dark is something spectacular, even to someone like Changbin who knows all too well of its dark side. 

“No,” Chan says softly, meeting Changbin’s gaze for the first time. His eyes reflect the glow of the stars, leaving them even brighter than normal, twin galaxies in their own right. “I think something else is.”

Changbin swallows. Something in his gut feels lead-weighted and featherlight all at once. There’s a deeper meaning to Chan’s words he can’t quite parse out, but he’d know even if his gut wasn’t churning with nervousness that it’s something monumentally important. He needs to do something, say something to reciprocate, but what can he-

“I’m having trouble sleeping,” he blurts out, entirely unthinking, and immediately slaps a hand over his mouth. 

Chan blinks at him, surprise obvious in his features. “What?”

Changbin is so busy panicking about the fact that he’s somehow both entirely ruined their moment and told Chan the one secret he’d sworn he’d keep to himself in one fell swoop that he doesn’t even register the question. Chan was trying to be kind to him, trying to express- _something_ , and he’d managed to fuck it up so terribly there’s absolutely no coming back-

“Bin,” Chan says gently, a hand coming up to cup his chin and thumb gently over his cheekbone. “Changbin, please look at me.”

It takes a moment for him to muster up the courage, but Chanbin warily meets his leader’s now-unreadable gaze again. 

“How long has this been going on?” Chan questions. 

There’s a long pause as Changbin considers lying to save himself from the uncomfortable conversation about to come, but he decides against it- Chan would see right through him. 

“Three months,” he mutters, retreating awkwardly from Chan’s grip.

“Three months? You’ve been having nightmares for _three months_ and you never told anyone?” Chan repeats, shock and pain swirling in his eyes. 

“It didn’t seem important,” Changbin replies weakly, the leaden weight of something a lot like guilt beginning to form in his gut. “We had so much else to deal with-”

“Changbin,” Chan says, voice low and serious. “You’re more important than anything we’ve dealt with recently. Even if one of us was dying, your problems would still matter. You’re a part of this team, and we lo- care about you no matter what.” The way he trips over the word _care_ is obvious but confusing- what else could he have wanted to say? An insult, probably. 

I’m sorry,” Changbin whispers, averting his eyes again. He’d betrayed Chan’s trust in him, knows it’s more than worth some sort of discipline, and hangs his head both in appropriate deference and because he can’t bear to see whatever expression is on Chan’s face. 

Chan shakes his head. “No, I’m sorry you didn’t think you could come to us. I promise we’ll never make you feel like that again.”

Why on earth is Chan apologizing to _him?_ Chan hasn’t been keeping secrets, hasn’t been dishonest to the only people in the world he cares about. “But I- I don’t deserve an apology. I lied, I _hurt you_ -”

“-I think that’s your conditioning talking,” Chan tells him softly. 

“Oh,” Changbin manages, and another sharp pang of self-loathing pierces his chest. He’s _supposed_ to be getting better, supposed to not have episodes anymore, but here he is, just as weak and susceptible to District control as ever. 

“That’s okay too,” Chan says, catching onto Changbin’s train of thought before he can so much as open his mouth. “We want you happy and healthy, Bin, and we’ll do anything we need to to make that happen- as much as you need, for as long as it takes.”

Something warm drips slowly down Changbin’s cheeks, and he realizes with a vague sense of horror that he’s crying. 

“Hey, hey,” Chan coos, and suddenly he has a lapful of his leader, Chan enfolding him in his arms and resting his head atop Changbin’s. “Don’t cry,” he hums, and all Changbin can do in response is cry harder, desperately trying to hide his sniffles by burying his face into the warmth of Chan’s jacket. 

“It’s alright,” Chan whispers, the vibrations of his words thrumming through Changbin’s whole being. “It’ll be okay.”

And somehow, resting in the safety of his leader’s arms and soaking his clothing with months of unshed tears, Changbin really does feel a little better. 

  
  
  


  
  
  


“It’s ours, it’s ours,” Jisung sings, voice rising with each repetition until it reverberates against the concrete walls like an earthquake. “ _It’s ours!”_ He throws his arms out wide, spreading them like eagle’s wings across the space, and smiles with so much radiance he puts the sun to shame. 

“We have a home!” Felix chimes in, and stumbles into Jisung’s chest to wrap him in a hug. Jisung’s hands come to wrap around Felix’s waist, clutching him tight, and he lifts the other boy easily up into the air, twirling him around in a blur of dazzling grins and palpable euphoria. 

Laughter rings like music through the room, Felix’s low chuckles and Jisung’s high giggling blending to make sweet harmony in the most dulcet of tones. Sunlight drizzles in through the skylight, lacquering them both in molten gold and making their eyes sparkle brighter than Miroh at midnight. 

Unbidden, the word Chan had used last night pops into Changbin’s mind- _ethereal_. The scene before him is ethereal beyond description. 

“Did I miss it?” Minho demands, tripping his way up the stairs in his haste to meet the rest of his family. “Work ran long, I had to help Jae-”

“ _Minho!_ ” seven voices shout as one, loud enough the poor boy flinches in surprise, stopping dead in his tracks. 

Changbin moves first, sweeping Minho up in his arms, and Minho, always so strong, simply melts into him. From there, Hyunjin and Seungmin dash over and join the hug, leaning their heads against each side of Minho’s, and in another few seconds Jeongin appears to worm his way in next to him. 

Chan is the only one who stands apart from their collective, content to merely watch. The grin on his lips is small but no less joyful than anyone else’s, a smile borne of an exhausted sort of contentment. 

Changbin realizes, then, that Chan must have dreamed of this moment for years. His team, safe from the District, free to do as they wish, and now with a place to call their own. For all that it means to Changbin -he’s an individual now in every sense of the word, with a job and a home and a family he loves more than anything- for Chan it must be positively monumental, a long-anticipated end result of a lifetime of planning and dreaming. 

Chan glances over and meets Changbin’s eyes, and the smile on his lips stretches infinitely wider, eyes glimmering with joy and affection and _love_ , and something in Changbin’s chest softens to mush. 

The rest of the day is a blur of movement and work, of shouted questions about where _do I put this lamp_ and _who the fuck locked Jeongin in the fridge?_ It’s barely-organized chaos, as most of the things Unit Nine do tend to be, but in the absolute best way possible. Boxes are regularly dropped to the ground as impromptu games of tag are picked up. Jisung and Seungmin start a competition to see who can steal the largest object from someone without them noticing (Seungmin wins by stealing an entire box of blankets while Changbin is absorbed in hanging fairy lights, which he promptly tries and fails to steal back, much to Jisung’s amusement. The next game they play is “how fast can Jisung run away from Changbin.” Changbin wins.) While they almost certainly could’ve gotten much more accomplished were they not been screwing around for most of the day, the eight of them are having far too much fun to care. 

By the time night falls, they still have a long way to go before everything is set up, but the building is already starting to look like home. Places where furniture has yet to be moved have been labelled with chalk, and they’re mostly sure everything has ended up on the correct floor. They’re not using the lower floor for much yet, beyond its built-in bathrooms and showers, so most of the moving process for Changbin has involved lugging boxes up the stairs for hours on end. While he complained every time he was given a particularly heavy item, he’s not really upset- the burn in his muscles is a satisfying reminder of all they’ve accomplished today. 

Their bed has been placed right in the middle of the floor, directly centered underneath the skylight. Though there are no stars visible so deep within Miroh, lights glimmer from other, taller nearby buildings and create the illusion of a night sky all the same. The eight of them have by now congregated in bed, tangled up together and simply resting. No one talks, far too exhausted for the effort of conversation, and instead they all stare up at the gleaming night above them in contentment. 

“I need to tell you guys something,” Chan says eventually.

Changbin hums in interest from where his head is pillowed against Felix’s thigh, eyes slowly slipping shut. He has at least three other people lying on him, their warm, gentle weights grounding him in a way nothing else can. Like this, despite being completely trapped beneath his teammates, he feels safer than he ever does, even when he’s armed to the teeth or sleeping with his back against a wall and one eye open. 

“Can you sit up, please?” Chan asks, a strange sort of lilt to his voice making it ring higher than usual. “It’s important.”

Despite a few groans and huffs of displeasure, everyone obediently shifts into a sitting position, forming a loose circuit linked by intertwined hands and heads resting on others’ shoulders. 

“I-” he stops for a moment, takes a deep breath. The seven of them watch him attentively, waiting. 

“I love you,” Chan says very slowly, making careful, meaningful eye contact with each one of them. 

There’s a long beat of silence wherein Chan looks about ready to explode from nervousness and everyone else stares him blankly. Of course they love each other- that’s why they ran away from the District in the first place, why they’ve made a life and a home for themselves in Miroh, so why does it warrant some grand announcement after all this time? 

“We love you too, Chan,” Felix says gently, affection shining in his voice. He looks as confused as Changbin feels, but his words are entirely genuine.

Chan glances at him hopefully for a second, then must not see the thing he’s looking for, because his face falls and he shakes his head. “No, not like-” another pause as Chan runs a frustrated hand through his hair and proceeds to bury his face in his hands. “Ugh.” 

“Whatever it is, you can tell us,” Minho hums, one hand coming up to gently sweep Chan’s hair out of his eyes. “We’ll understand.” 

“Okay,” Chan breathes, inhaling deeply. “Okay.” 

“I love you. Romantically,” he says. “And I have for a very long time.”

“I’ve always loved you,” he continues, words rushing out river-quick, an unstoppable, torrential sort of rain that will only end when every moment of lovesick anguish he’s been through for the past three years is released. “I was alone for such a long time. Everyone I ever knew left me, but then I met you, and you never did. You stayed with me, you cared about me, you gave me a reason to wake up every morning. You’re all so beautiful, so strong, so perfect- how could I _not_ love you?”

Oh. 

Changbin knows implicitly that Chan loves him, knows he loves him back just as fiercely in the same way he knows his own name, but hearing it spoken aloud like this is different, gives the feeling tangible meaning. Chan loves him romantically. In the way Jae loves Brian, in the way he sees couples arm in arm on the street, in the way Seungmin gushes about in some of his favorite books. 

There’s a brief moment where everything is still, where all of Miroh seems to go quiet out of respect for the discussion being had. The very world seems to freeze while the seven of them process the implications of what their leader has just confessed. 

Changbin understands almost nothing about romantic relationships. But he does know that he loves Chan with every bit of the same profound devotion his leader feels for him, and if that’s all it takes, well-

“I love you too.”

It’s Hyunjin who speaks first. “In the same way. You- you’re everything.” 

The words are spoken to one person and seven all at once. 

“I love you, too,” Jisung chimes in almost instantly. “All of you.” As he speaks, he squeezes Minho’s hand so tightly his knuckles turn white. 

“I do too,” Seungmin adds quietly, shyly. “I wouldn’t be myself without you.” 

“Sap,” Jeongin teases, smiling ear to ear from where his head is resting on Seungmin’s shoulder. “I love you guys.”

A soft, muted sob has everyone instantly turning to face its source, eyes wide and worried. 

“Chan, are you crying?” 

“No,” Chan says weakly, as tears drip down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m just so happy.”

At his words, it’s like a dam bursts- Jisung starts crying next, curling up into Minho’s arms, and suddenly everyone is moving to comfort someone else, laughing and sniffling and cooing soft assurances to anyone willing to listen. When Seungmin presses a kiss to Chan’s still-damp cheeks as he wipes his tears away, it seems _right_ , an easy, logical extension of everything they’ve done before to this moment. 

Changbin has never kissed anyone before, obviously- he’s seen Jisung and Minho do it all the time, and Felix will sometimes kiss peoples’ cheeks if he’s feeling particularly elated about something, but as much as Changbin craves affection, he all-too-often forgets that he’s allowed, if not encouraged, to initiate it. 

Tonight, though, it seems as easy as breathing to press his lips to Felix’s, to whisper a quiet _I love you_ in response to Minho when he cups Changbin’s face in his hands and presses a kiss to his forehead. 

And when he finally sleeps that night, curled up next to the eight people he loves most in the world with the ghost of a smile still on his face, he dreams of nothing at all.

  
  


The next couple of days are strange, to say the least.

It’s not a bad thing; simply different, actions fledgling and awkward where before they were simply forbidden and undiscussed. There are a plethora of new words and thoughts and actions open to the eight of them now, a whole new level of their relationship to explore, and it’s only reasonable that it wouldn’t be perfect on their first try. 

“ _Ow_ ,” Hyunjin hisses, wounded, when Jisung bites his lip a little too hard by accident mid-kiss. 

Minho laughs at him from across the room. “Yeah, get used to that,” he snickers, and Jisung hides his face in his hands. 

“It’s cute, don’t worry,” Felix reassures him as he waltzes past, pausing only to press a kiss to Jisung’s hair. 

Jisung pouts anyway, of course, but the only recompense he receives is Hyunjin leaning back in and kissing the expression right off of his face. Judging by the way he looks when they next break apart, however, with his eyes glazed over and his expression utterly starstruck, it’s clear he doesn’t mind. 

While the eight of them used to work together like a well-oiled machine, now they work like an even better-oiled one that happens to get easily distracted by what each of its parts are doing- and how good they look while doing it. 

When Changbin decides one evening to clean his guns on one of the tables next to their kitchen, he finds out Felix ended up burning their dinner while he was working, something that never happens when he cooks. A very red-faced Felix refuses to explain why- though, judging by the laughs he receives from several of his teammates as he indignantly digs into the charred remains of his meal, he’s not nearly as subtle as he thinks. 

To put it simply, it’s a total mess. Changbin wouldn’t have it any other way. 

While they certainly loved each other just as much before as they do now, their devotion was always expressed quietly, in fleeting touches and meaningful gestures more so than explicit displays of affection. While none of those other things have stopped, Changbin is now free to express the overwhelming love he feels for his unit whenever he likes, and releasing an entire lifetime of trapped feelings into open air -and having them be returned!- is wonderful beyond description. 

There are other new things he didn’t think about, too. Parts of relationships he’d never really considered or seen. Unexpected blessings. 

The first time he walks in on Chan pressing Minho into their bed, Changbin forgets how to breathe. 

Minho’s head is thrown back to give Chan space to press openmouthed kisses onto his throat, his hands woven into Minho’s hair like they belong there and tugging gently in time with every soft, blissed-out sound the other makes. One of Chan’s knees is slotted between Minho’s thighs, and the latter’s shirt is unbuttoned, its dark fabric a sharp contrast against his honey-gold skin. They’re positively radiant in the afternoon sunlight, more resplendent than the finest of art, and Changbin can do nothing but _stare_. 

It doesn’t take long for them to notice him, gawking and red-faced at the top of the stairs. 

“Welcome home, Binnie,” Chan sings, like this is an everyday occurrence. 

“Come say hi,” Minho pants, smirking like the cat who got the cream. “We missed you.” 

Powerless and utterly enraptured by the scene before him, Changbin does, nearly floating over to the two of them, and what follows is an experience not even a memory wipe could rip away from Changbin’s brain. 

To say this new development is an improvement would be an understatement, not unlike saying that _space is rather large_ or _the District is not a great governing party._ Changbin is happier than every other time he’s ever felt joy in his life put together, and for once there’s no expiration date on the way his whole world seems to glitter with elation from the moment he wakes up until he falls asleep in the arms of his teammates each night. He gets to _keep this_. 

It’s an almost scary prospect- Changbin is so used to nothing in his life lasting that the thought of something so unabashedly wonderful being anywhere close to permanent seems laughable, a pathetic hope seconds away from being dashed by the cruelty of the world they live in. But every time one of his members smiles at him and presses a kiss to his cheek, every time he goes to sleep to the sound of a whispered _I love you_ , this fragile, still-blooming thing they have feels a little more real, a little more stable. 

And things somehow only get better from there, something Changbin hadn’t thought was possible. 

“We should get married!” Jisung randomly suggests one morning. He’s grinning, eyes sparkling in the way they always do whenever he gets what he thinks is a great idea, and the sight is so hopelessly endearing to Changbin it almost aches. 

“How would we even do that?” Jeongin points out immediately. “Doesn’t the government have to approve it?”

“Some people do it just by exchanging rings and vows,” Minho answers from where he’s shrugging on one of Chan’s jackets in preparation to leave for work. “That’s what Jae did.”

“And where would we get rings?” Changbin asks. With all they’ve spent on their building and its furnishings, they barely have enough for food at the moment, much less something as frivolous and expensive as jewelry. 

“Fine,” Jisung huffs, pouting, as he flops back onto their bed, sending a few blankets flying from the resulting bounce. “We won’t, then.” 

They end up doing it anyway. 

While the eight of them don’t end up getting rings, they do have their keys, and it’s close enough in intent that Changbin figures the unconventional approach doesn’t matter. It’s not like someone could walk up to them and tell them they’re not married, anyway; he knows if anyone so much as tried, they’d immediately get their ass handed to them eight times over. 

Exchanging vows is odd and a little awkward- Unit Nine has been conditioned for so long to show their affection in actions rather than words that it’s almost permanent instinct by now. but they try their best regardless, standing in the middle of Honey Park with neatly styled hair and clad in their finest clothing, shivering in the cold. While most of the plants have died off for the winter, they manage to find a small grove of red asters still clinging to life for the ceremony, their brilliant blooms nearly swallowed by an explosion of wild thistle slowly succumbing to the icy chill of winter.

The eight of them form a loose circle in the grass, arms crossed and hands folded to stop themselves from subconsciously reaching for one another. Every few seconds someone makes eye contact with someone else and starts giggling, the sound one of musical joy for some (Jisung and Seungmin) and nervous anticipation for others (Hyunjin and Chan).

Chan goes first, barely managing to get out more than a sentence about how much he loves them all before his voice is shaking and he’s choking back tears. The seven of them move at once to try and console him, but their leader waves them off. “It’s fine,” he manages, smiling. 

“You are my reason to live,” he continues, steady despite his watering eyes. “The seven of you are my universe, my light, and my happiness. I love all of you so, so much. Thank you for being my family.”

Changbin is already on the verge of tears and they’ve barely even started- he’s not going to survive this, is he?

Jisung, next to Chan, looks like he’s in physical pain from the effort of not moving to touch their now quietly sniffling leader, but he moves forward with his own vows with an admirable determination. His speech is a long, mostly ad-libbed telling of his favorite memories of the eight of them, closed out with the most enthusiastic “I love you” Changbin has ever heard another person say. 

Around the circle they go, each member bringing their own intimate touch to the ceremony. Minho tells the seven of them what he loves most about each of them. Changbin thanks them for making him feel like a person even when everything in him argues otherwise. Seungmin tells them he wants nothing more in life than to stay with his unit forever. 

Felix is the last to speak. “We’re eight or nothing,” he says to close out his short set of vows, expression somber but eyes glittering with emotion. His hands are folded delicately in front of him and trembling slightly. “Always.”

“Always,” seven voices echo, sealing the vow. 

There’s a quiet sniffle from someone -Jisung, maybe?- and Jeongin huffs a laugh in response, and just like that, the moment has turned from solemn and profoundly emotional to just another thing the eight of them are doing as a collective, its enjoyment wrought not from the circumstances but instead the mere presence of the people they love. 

“Alright,” Chan announces, turning away from Felix to look at the rest of his members. “You -or we, I guess- can now exchange keys.”

Changbin turns Hyunjin’s key over in his hands, taking in its elegant curves and the way it gleams in the light, entirely befitting of its owner. With hands trembling from equal parts cold and emotional overload, he undoes the clasp and steps to the right to loop the necklace around its owner’s neck. Hyunjin’s been letting his hair grow long lately, much to the delight of his teammates, and today he’s put it up in an elegant half ponytail, even plaiting a small braid into it for the occasion. Making sure not to disturb the updo more than necessary, Changbin carefully clasps the necklace shut. 

He leans back just as a chaste kiss is pressed to his jaw, and, though he’d claim otherwise if asked, the red that subsequently blooms on his face is most certainly not from the icy wind. 

“You’re so cute,” Minho hums in that lovely way of his that always manages to sound impossibly fond without being patronizing. He’s somehow already slipped Changbin’s necklace around his neck and clasped it without him feeling anything- it would be wildly impressive were it anyone else, but for Minho, it’s entirely unsurprising he’d managed such a feat. 

Changbin reaches up to touch his key. It’s warm, a pleasant contrast to the bitter cold biting at his cheeks, and its edges are pointy but not sharp enough to hurt. Touching it feels like a reminder of their bond- grounding and special and _warm,_ oh so very warm. 

Somewhere between their escape and the present Changbin developed an addiction to heat; be it from the light of sun or his teammates’ touch, he craves it constantly. Nothing ever quite seems warm enough, nothing can ever truly leach the frost from his bones. His skin is always cool, his joints always stiff when they’re left still for too long, and he’s always the first to wrap himself in a blanket in the evenings back home. 

Now, though, the inside of his chest feels like it’s been filled up with liquid sunshine, dripping over his ribs and lacquering his heart in an unbreakable coating of love and reassurance that, come what may, everything will be alright. 

For the first time in his life, Changbin realizes he’s not cold at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~hahaha let's hope it stays that way Changbin~~ ;)
> 
> I didn't really intend for them to get married (and def not this early) but I'm certainly not going to take that away from them,,, Unit Nine said OT8 rights and who am I to get in their way?
> 
> Happy Pride! Be gay, do crime everyone <3
> 
> Come say hi! Tell me if you liked the wedding ^-^  
> And please leave a comment, validation makes chapters come out faster <3  
> [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/CelSilences)  
> [ CuriousCat ](https://curiouscat.me/CelestialSilences)


	4. Hypernova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans are made and executed.
> 
> (Hypernova, n.- An exploding star that produces exponentially more light than a supernova.
> 
> _"If a large enough star dies, it may produce a hypernova")_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late asf im so sorry ;-; the next update Will Not take this long I promise!!
> 
> Also- this is a tw for this chapter for anyone who might be upset by violent protests, especially after these past few months. If you don't want to read that scene but still want to know what happens, I'd recommend skipping everything from "founding day dawns" to "the tension in Seungmin's shoulders fractionally evaporates."
> 
> (love to my beta Gwen as always!)

“Are you ready for the Grand Disquisition?” Jae asks, voice dripping sarcasm. 

Seungmin blinks at him. “The what?”

Just when he thinks he has a handle on life in Miroh, something new always comes along to confuse him. Honestly, he loves it- Seungmin has gotten to learn and experience so _much_ , and he feels like an entirely different person than he used to be thanks to all of the information he’s gotten to absorb over the course of the past six months. 

“You mean that thing with the president?” Minho asks as he slips back behind the counter of 6-Days, clipboard and pencil in hand. It’s inventory week, apparently, so he’s been staying at the shop with Jae for longer hours than usual; as such, everyone else has made it their mission to walk Minho home at least once so he won’t miss any time spent with his husbands.

Upon seeing Seungmin, his companion for the evening, he smiles affectionately and leans forward to kiss him. “Hey babe,” he hums as their lips brush, and a smile dawns on Seungmin’s face reflexively. Conscious of Jae’s presence, he leans back quickly, but he isn’t even looking at their display of affection- he’s scribbling something down on a matching clipboard to Minho’s, expression unreadable and clearly focused on his writing. 

“So what is the Grand Disquisition?” Seungmin asks curiously. Clé doesn’t have a lot of holidays, and certainly none that sound this grandiose. “A political thing?”

“Yeah, it’s Park’s annual speech for Founding Day,” Jae tells him casually, barely glancing up and snapping his gum. Clearly the Grand Disquisition, regardless of its name, is decidedly unimpressive to witness. “He goes and talks about how great everything is for a few hours, we all pretend to listen, and everything goes back to normal.” 

Seungmin hasn’t seen much of President Park even after all this time in Miroh- he prefers to hide behind a wall of claims that he and the District are “one and the same,” which allows him to generally stay out of the limelight while still taking credit for everything the government accomplishes. The number of District initiatives with his name on them is truly staggering. 

What few pictures Seungmin _has_ seen of him are haunting, however, the sort of thing that would permanently sear their way into his brain even if he didn’t have an eidetic memory. President Park has perfectly shiny black hair, perfectly tanned skin, and wears a constant, too-wide smirk on his lips that seems simultaneously smug and victorious yet deeply condescending and judgmental all at once. 

He looks like a corpse, in Seungmin’s opinion. A dressed-up corpse with a fake tan and over-starched hair and the emptiest, deadest eyes he’s ever seen- and Seungmin’s seen plenty of corpses. 

“Oh,” Seungmin says. 

“Gross,” Minho adds. “Are we required to watch it?”

“Unfortunately,” Jae scoffs. “Wouldn’t want our glorious leader to go too long without getting fawned over by everyone in the country.”

Seungmin isn’t sure how he’ll survive looking at President Park’s face for any extended length of time, but it seems he’ll have to figure something out. 

“The market’s going to be closed for Founding Day, by the way,” Jae tells Minho. “No businesses are allowed to open.”

Minho makes a face. “Damn. I really do have to watch, then.”

“You think we can break the TV ‘by accident’ before that?” Seungmin asks. 

“Only if you want Hyunjin and Jeongin to murder you,” Minho snorts. Scrawling one last thing down on his clipboard, he sets it and his pen on the counter of 6-Days with a _clack._ “I think I’ve gotten everything for today.”

Jae doesn’t bother glancing at Minho’s work to check it over. “Good, now go home. You worked hard today.”

“You too,” Minho insists as he exits the market stall and moves to stand next to Seungmin. Most of the other shops at this point are near-deserted, their owners out for dinner or simply resting after the evening rush. “If I hear you stayed the night again I’m going to start locking you out.”

“Why did I hire you again?” Jae grouses. “You say one more thing and I’ll cut your pay.”

“You do that,” Minho replies, entirely unimpressed, and the two of them glare at each other for a moment before bursting into giggles, a thoroughly entertained Seungmin easily joining in. 

“Get home safe,” Jae tells the two of them when the moment is over, and Minho nods as he slips his arm through Seungmin’s. 

“Goodnight Jae!” Seungmin calls behind him, and the shopkeep offers a two-fingered wave as they head towards the exit of the market. 

The trip back home is quiet, but it’s a comfortable silence- both of them had work today, and they’re too tired to try for unnecessary conversation. Instead they walk with their fingers loosely intertwined, in perfect lockstep as always. Occasionally Minho squeezes Seungmin’s hand lightly, and the latter replies by rubbing his thumb over his husband’s knuckles. Only when fat, icy raindrops begin to strike Seungmin’s hair and face do they bother to pick up their pace, steps quick but not panicked as they finally make it back to their building. 

It’s not particularly late, the sky having just recently been plunged into the darkness of night, but the first floor is deserted all the same. While it’s possible that his unit’s simply decided to turn in early for the night, given that they’re all a bunch of anxious insomniacs, it’s far more likely they’re just upstairs cuddling. 

“Coming to bed?” Minho asks, running a tired hand through his damp hair.

“Just a minute,” Seungmin hums. 

Minho yawns softly and starts moving towards the stairs. “Okay.” Seungmin doubts he’ll get much farther than the trampoline before passing out for the night, but that’s alright- a sleeping Minho is almost as nice to cuddle as an awake Minho. 

Carefully placed at the back of the second-highest shelf is a polaroid camera and a box of film, both worn but clean in a way that speaks to their frequent use. A gift from Felix purchased from a secondhand market stall, the camera has become one of Seungmin’s most prized possessions, and he loves the novelty of being able to take and print out pictures as often as he’d like. The art of photography itself is equally fascinating- there are so many ways to capture the ordinary and make it something beautiful, often simply through a subtle shift in light or finding the perfect angle. 

He goes on proper excursions to photograph wildlife and the prettiest parts of Miroh when he can, but even on days where he’s far too busy to even consider taking a moment to enjoy himself, he still always takes at least one picture every day for his journal. In the free space next to his camera rests a notebook, spiral-bound and puffy from the fullness of his pages, and Seungmin pulls it down, careful to keep the polaroid atop its cover from falling to the floor. 

It’s a photo he’d taken this morning of his family passed out on top of each other, a mess of arms and legs and hair flying in all directions on their trampoline. When and why he takes photos varies- he’s snapped pictures of everything from Jisung and Hyunjin stumbling home after a night out graffiting to Felix watching morning sunbeams through their skylight, but the reason is always the same. Anything beautiful he can’t bear to forget he keeps, be it trapped in a photograph or captured in words. 

Plucking a small paper clip from an open box on a lower shelf, Seungmin carefully slides the new photograph through it, then clips it to the left side of the open page.

On the right side is nothing but blank lines, space for him to write out the entirety of the day’s happenings. It’s an exercise in memory, a constant evaluation of his abilities. Much like one would constantly flex a newly-healed limb, Seungmin continually tests himself over and over to ensure nothing escapes his notice. 

_Date: 01/03_

_Weather: rainy & humid _

_Mood: content_

_Work today was easy enough; we got a grand total of two customers at the bookstore, and only of them bought anything. I spent my entire shift reading and going through some of the new books Mr. Lee bought from an estate sale; I get to take two of them home tomorrow._

_I also walked Minho home today. He cut his hair yesterday, and the new style is adorable. Jisung has taken to pushing his bangs into his eyes whenever he can, and Minho has refused to cuddle with him until he apologizes. So far neither of them have backed down, but Jisung will definitely break first._

_Jae explained what “Founding Day” is- a yearly celebration of the government’s accomplishments, with the crowning event being a speech from President Park. It sounds ridiculous, frankly, but we’re required to watch it anyways. Hopefully with everyone else around it won’t be so awful- maybe we can get some takeout and spend the day together. That would be nice._

Seungmin taps his pen against his lips contemplatively for a moment. Is there anything else worth recording? 

He hasn’t had even the slightest memory lapse since coming to Miroh, but the fear of losing himself keeps him writing everything down, carefully photographing the things he loves so that even if he does forget again, he’ll have somewhere to start from. 

His teammates -his husbands- would of course do a wonderful job of helping should anything ever happen to him, but Seungmin wants to be able to hear things from his own mind, to fill the void in his head with memories of his own making for once. He doesn’t like having to depend on other people to know himself or his surroundings, not when memories are so easily warped and altered even when not exposed to constant drugging. 

Seungmin’s probably written enough for the day- he’s too tired to bother with any other minor details. Closing the notebook, he absently runs a finger over the rough plastic of its cover before carefully setting back in its place on the bookshelf. 

He climbs the stairs quietly so as not to disturb anyone who might be resting, and once he reaches the top he pauses to see who’s home. 

Minho has somehow managed to find himself in the center of a cuddle pile already, Felix’s face buried in his neck and Changbin’s head resting on his stomach. All three of them are fast asleep or somewhere close to it, clearly having gravitated together through instinct alone. 

Another memory to keep. Seungmin can’t help but smile as he vaults up onto the trampoline to make himself comfortable next to his husbands.

Names are no more permanent than morning dewdrops. Faces, too, melt away as easily as snowfall in sunlight. Even the most essential of memories can be ripped away from the all-too-fragile mind, plucked like delicate flowers by careless, greedy hands, but the warmth his team brings him and the way it sets his very soul at ease is a feeling he’ll never be able to forget. 

“We should go kill the president.”

“That’s so stupid I’m going to do us both a favor and pretend you didn’t say anything,” Jeongin says.

“I’m serious,” Hyunjin protests, and Seungmin glances at him from where he’s perched on their couch, halfway through one of his newest books. Hyunjin certainly doesn’t _look_ very serious- he’s splayed across the trampoline like he’s trying to take up as much space as physically possible, the entire left half of his body covered in blankets while the right is left bare. Not the most professional way to propose an assassination. “Minho mentioned he’s making a speech here in a couple of weeks. It’d be the perfect opportunity.” 

Seungmin frowns contemplatively. “Why should we kill Park, though?” He questions. “What would we get out of that?”

It sounds selfish, but if there’s one thing Seungmin allows himself to be selfish about, it’s the safety of his unit. Anything that puts them at unnecessary risk has to be more than worth it in his eyes.

He knows many of his teammates don’t think the same -Hyunjin and Jisung go out most nights and commit all manner of petty crime just to feed the fire of their anarchist spirits- but Seungmin understands a little more intimately than everyone else what the District can do to anything they perceive as a threat. The eight of them have a good, stable life they’ve carved out for themselves against every imaginable odd, and doing anything to disrupt it now would be downright stupid. 

Hyunjin’s head pops up over the rim of the trampoline, ebony hair dripping into his eyes as he looks over at Seungmin. “The District would be gone?” He replies, like the answer is obvious. “We’d never have to watch our backs or be afraid again. We could just- be us. Be free.” 

“If it were that easy, I feel like someone else would’ve done it already,” Seungmin says dryly. 

“Well, no one’s better at murder than us,” Jeongin adds, a snicker in his voice. “And besides, how ironic would it be for _us_ to be the ones to kill him?”

“Who are we killing?” Jisung asks cheerily as he emerges from downstairs. “Is it that fucker who called Innie a slur last week?” 

“Felix already went and kicked his ass,” Jeongin informs him. Despite his best efforts to appear nonchalant, there’s a hint of a smile and a tinge of a blush on his cheeks that suggests he’s far more pleased by their displays of protectiveness than he’s willing to admit. 

“Good,” Jisung says viciously, a shark-like grin on his lips. “Now, what were you talking about just now?”

“We’re gonna assassinate President Park, apparently,” Seungmin answers. Honestly, he’s not sure this idea will survive until the end of the week- Hyunjin loves to come up with strange plans that never get very far. Jisung is often the only person he can convince to go along with him, but considering Jisung has roughly the same level of impulse control as a puppy just let off a leash, his enthusiasm is hardly a sign of a well-thought-out scheme. 

“We’re gonna _what?”_ Jisung squawks. “When? You’d better let me come.”

“Of course you’re coming,” Hyunjin answers. “We all are.”

“We haven’t decided anything yet-” Jeongin interjects, but Jisung is already whooping in delight, bouncing up onto the trampoline besides his husband and pressing eager kisses to his cheeks. 

“I can’t wait!” he sings with a childlike eagerness entirely unbefitting of the circumstances, and all Seungmin can do is smile fondly. 

A decision this monumental requires a family meeting, so the eight of them gather together that night to discuss Hyunjin’s proposition. Splayed across the various furniture on their first floor and each other -they’d chosen not to simply sit on the trampoline in an attempt to preserve some semblance of formality- they listen as Hyunjin passionately argues his case. 

_We’re made for this,_ he tells them, eyes gleaming with inner fire, opalesque in the warm overhead lighting. They never use white lights in their home if they can help it, instead preferring to bathe everything in a gentle yellow glow. _We can get back at the District for everything they’ve done to us, and we can help everyone in Clé in the process. The government is corrupt and cruel, and we have a chance to stop them- we need to take it. It’s the only right thing to do._

When he finally finishes, heaving in a deep breath and collapsing into the nearest chair, the group discussion starts. 

“This is an incredibly dangerous idea,” Chan begins. “If anyone messes up in the slightest, we risk everyone being hurt or killed.”

“It’s also going to be nearly impossible to pull off,” Changbin points out. “Park doesn’t just walk around defenseless. Killing him would be harder than any mission we’ve ever done.”

“And what’s to stop the District from just replacing Park?” Seungmin adds. Surely there’s a near-infinite number of government officials who would kill for the chance to rule Clé; assassinating President Park might end up less like decapitating a snake and more like beheading a hydra. 

“We make it public,” Hyunjin replies almost instantly. “If people know he’s dead, they’ll know they don’t have anything to fear anymore.”

“How can you be sure people would even rebel?” Jeongin questions. “They haven’t before.”

“Park’s never been dead before,” Hyunjin answers easily. 

They go back and forth until there’s no loose ends left to be addressed, trading ideas and possibilities back and forth like they’ve already decided what to do. Thus, it’s not much of a surprise when they begin to make their decisions. 

“I think this is a stupid idea with an incredibly low chance of success,” Minho says slowly. “But nothing else we’ve done since escaping has been any better. I say we try it.”

Hyunjin looks positively delighted. 

“I don’t think this is very well-thought-out,” Changbin speaks next, expression unreadable. “But I agree- killing Park is the right thing to do, and we’re the only people who can do it. If we can come up with a good plan, we should act on it.”

“If killing Park will help people, we need to do it,” Felix adds from where he’s curled up in Jisung’s lap, expression steely certain. 

“And you already know I’m in,” Jisung chimes in, raising his hand. 

Chan runs a hand through his hair contemplatively. “Is this really what everyone wants?”

Though it’s slow, he eventually receives seven gestures and noises of assent. 

“Okay,” he says, clapping his hands together, and it feels as though something shifts in the very air as he does. “Let’s kill President Park.”

  
  


The plan is simple enough in theory but infinitely harder in execution, as most plans tend to be. 

In short, they’re going to shoot President Park in the middle of his Grand Disquisition speech and broadcast it to everyone in Clé. Easy enough on the surface- Changbin kills people like that every week. But the moment they start discussing potential plans, a litany of problems arise almost instantly. 

They need to get their sniper into a building high enough and angled well enough to make the shot. Seungmin, who’s going to be doing the broadcasting of the assassination, will need a place to manage that. President Park has a special unit of soldiers serving as his security detail, and they’ll need to be dealt with too. There’s also the Founding Day parade to contend with, something none of them know anything about, and that added element could easily be both helpful and a massive inconvenience depending on how things go. 

Changbin decides immediately that he wants to be on the ground in the thick of things, so that leaves Park’s actual assassin yet to be determined. 

“I’ll do it,” Minho volunteers almost instantly when the issue is raised, eyes glinting with metallic sharpness. 

“Are you sure?” Chan asks. “You’ll be shooting from really high up.” 

Minho doesn’t falter in the slightest. “I’ll be fine,” he replies. “It’ll be worth it.” 

Most of them will be in the streets, keeping an eye on President Park’s security detail and waiting to handle the inevitable chaos that will come after the assassination, but there are still a handful of jobs that don’t require being in the line of fire. Seungmin’s is one of them, a role he accepts without complaint -he’s laughably out of practice with close combat anyway- but when Chan tries to delegate his normal position of handling them to someone else, the response he receives is less than enthusiastic. 

“Jeongin,” he begins, “you can stay here with your computers and-”

“Like hell I’m staying behind,” Jeongin snaps. “I’m not just going to sit around and let you do everything.” He looks deeply offended, almost hurt, in a way they rarely see. It’s surprising for a moment, until Seungmin realizes what it must feel like to be the only person told to stay behind while the people they love risk their lives. 

“We’re not leaving you behind,” Changbin says, but Jeongin cuts him off almost instantly. 

“So what is it, then? I’m not capable? Not skilled enough for you to let me out in the field?” he snarls, then blinks fiercely a few times. 

“It’s not that, Innie, it’s just-” Felix’s eyes are wide and worried. 

“We don’t want to lose you,” Hyunjin finishes, and seven emphatic nods immediately follow his words. 

“We just want you to be safe,” Chan tells him gently. “Since you don’t need to be out in the field, there’s no point in putting you in unnecessary danger.” 

Jeongin glares at the ground for a moment, shoulders hunched and face still stormy, but eventually he sighs and lets the tension bleed out of his body. “Fine.”

“Thank you,” Chan says, wrapping an arm around his waist and pressing a kiss to his forehead. 

“All of you had better come back safe,” Jeongin mutters, accepting the display of affection with dignity. “Or else.”

“Aww, we love you too,” Jisung coos, and Jeongin promptly hits him. 

Fortunately, after that the rest of the planning goes much more smoothly. 

They very quickly assemble a whiteboard of necessary information, and it rapidly becomes so complex Seungmin is the only one who can keep track of everything on it. While Chan and Minho are the ones doing most of the detailed planning, he quickly finds himself a frequent member of their discussions, acting like a walking database. Everything from building schematics for Minho to obscure computer passwords for Jeongin he memorizes and recites at a moment’s notice, and as days bleed into a week, then two, their scheme gradually blooms from the seed of an idea to a fully-fledged operation. 

It’s not perfect, but it’s a plan. They can make it work. 

They’re not soldiers anymore, and they never will be, but something about having a mission on the horizon again is almost exciting. There’s nothing quite like working with his unit like this, doing what they’re best at with the added bonus of being free to be themselves all the while. The eight of them kiss and brush hands and sit on each other’s laps at every opportunity while having cheerful discussions of murder and revolution, and Seungmin absolutely revels in it.

_Date: 09/03_

_Weather: sunny_

_Mood: excited_

_I’ve been writing so much I had to buy a new pen today. I know we can’t use computers to record things for obvious reasons, but if Chan or Minho ask me to take any more notes for them I swear my hand will cramp up permanently. Maybe I should force someone else to write things down._

_On second thought, that might be worse- unless it’s Felix doing the writing, no one else will be able to read it. The things I do for them._

_In all honesty, though, planning everything has been kind of fun. It’s a lot of work, of course, but it’s exciting, and everyone has been so happy lately that just seeing them makes me smile._

_I didn’t think I’d ever want to do anything like this again, even of my own volition, but here I am, getting ready to help kill the president of Clé. My unit really is all I know, I guess. The District lied to us about almost everything, but at least they got that part right. As long as I can keep everyone safe, it doesn’t matter what we do._

_I really hope this works._

  
  


There comes a series of knocks at the door right around noon, near-musical in their beat, and after a brief but intense game of rock-paper-scissors Jisung gets up and answers it, muttering all the while that they must’ve _rigged it or something, seriously, I have to do this_ every _time_ \- 

After peeking through a window to see who’s outside, he lazily throws the door open to admit Jae, who gratefully steps inside and out of the cold. They’re not the kind of people who regularly have guests over -the only companionship Unit Nine really needs is each other- but they owe Jae a lifetime’s worth of meals and company for everything he’s done for them. Besides, he’s great to have around even if they weren’t determined to pay him back- no one has more entertaining gossip and perpetually witty commentary on the tip of their tongue than the market’s head merchant. 

“Gooood morning,” Jae sings, and he receives an immediate chorus of greetings in reply. 

“Did you bring food?” Changbin shouts from where he’s curled up on a beanbag chair in a corner. 

“Would you even let me in if I didn’t?” Jae snarks, but he holds up a bag full of takeout in answer all the same. “Do you ever pay for your own groceries anymore?”

“Why would we do that?” Hyunjin asks nonchalantly. “We already receive such generous donations from you.”

“Besides, we don’t pay for most things,” Jisung adds, skipping over to divest Jae of his bag. 

As he begins to paw through it, Minho and Chan appear from upstairs, stomping down the steps with a variety of guns and other weapons slung over every free body part available. They look impressively intimidating despite their relaxed expressions, and for a moment Seungmin sees the soldiers they used to be staring back at him. Then Minho smiles, Chan kisses his cheek, and the illusion is promptly shattered. 

“We should just give you a key at this point,” Minho remarks upon seeing Jae. 

“Or the passcode, whenever Jeonginnie gets around to upgrading the lock,” Felix adds. 

Jeongin pouts. “I’m working on it, okay? Do you know how hard it is to get a digital lock without District tech in it?”

Seungmin gets it- the market operates almost entirely on an analog-and-paper system for that exact reason, despite its general inconvenience for everyone there. Still, a digital lock would be nice, if only so he wouldn’t have to worry about his house key getting stolen or one of his teammates getting locked out. 

“You look ready to start a war,” Jae remarks as he takes in the scene before him. “Are you sure you’ve got enough weapons? You might wanna grab a few more- I think I still see some bare skin showing.”

“We’re gonna go kill the president,” Hyunjin informs him casually, in the way one might announce they’re going grocery shopping, or out for a walk.

“Wha- I was _joking,_ you know,” Jae splutters, eyes comically wide. If he was still holding his takeout, he likely would’ve dropped it. 

“We’re not,” Minho says cheerfully, leaning the rifle on his back against a nearby wall. “In a couple of weeks, Park’s no longer going to have a head.”

Jae gapes at the eight of them like they’ve grown second heads, searching their faces almost desperately for any sign of a joke. “Please, _please_ tell me you’re not serious,” he begs. “There are easier ways to die if that’s what you’re after.”

“No one’s going to die,” Changbin tells him. “Well, none of _us,_ anyway.” The smirk that follows is nothing short of sadistic. 

“There’s _eight_ of you.” Jae looks entirely appalled by the mere suggestion, and Seungmin wonders if anyone has ever come close to assassinating President Park before this. Changbin kills minor government officials every week, but they’re meaningless, faceless entities who can be replaced overnight. President Park, on the other hand, is quite literally the face of the District, the closest thing to omnipotent a person can be. The thought of him _gone_ is simply unimaginable, like picturing the sky without the sun or Seungmin without his teammates.   
  
“That’s all we need,” Hyunjin says fiercely.   
  
Jae stares at him for a moment. “That’s cute,” he says at last, “but stupid. You’re gonna need some help.”

“Are you offering?” Seungmin asks curiously. Jae’s never struck him as the fighting type, but maybe he has more experience in that area than he lets in on. No one in Miroh can escape the constant threat of violence forever. 

“I-“ Jae pauses, shakes his head as if to himself. “No. But you can’t just walk up and shoot the goddamn president.” 

The eight of them look at him blankly. The obvious _why not?_ written on their faces goes unsaid, but Jae lets out a long-suffering sigh all the same, dropping his head into his hands and muttering something about _how are any of you still alive when you have no common sense?_

“If you just kill him, the cops will arrest or kill everyone in the parade crowd until they find out who did it,” he eventually explains. “You have to do something else. Create a disturbance at the very least.” 

“Well, we can’t exactly start a riot-“ Minho pauses. “Wait, can we?” 

“We’d need more than just us to do that,” Changbin points out. 

Without really meaning to Seungmin’s eyes find Jae again, and the expression on his face is vaguely disapproving but contemplative enough he knows he’s about to say something else. 

“I might know some people you can talk to.”

Before anyone can so much as open their mouths he’s talking again, words slow and tentative. 

“They’re not- rebels, or whatever you are-” Jae waves a hand- “But they’ll hear you out, at least. Maybe they can convince you not to go get yourselves killed.” 

“There are people like us?” Hyunjin asks excitedly.

“No,” Jae scoffs. “The last time anyone tried speaking out against the government, they killed them all and arrested so many people Clé’s economy almost crashed. This market is the closest thing around here to a rebellion. You’ve already broken the rules once- I wouldn’t try your luck again.” 

“We have to,” Felix says with conviction. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“You’re all insane.” Jae’s eyebrows are up to his hairline. “Absolutely insane.”

“You won’t be saying that in a couple of weeks,” Hyunjin tells him confidently. 

“Only because I don’t like speaking ill of the dead,” Jae deadpans, but after a moment he sighs, any trace of fierceness draining out of him. “Come to the market’s meeting room at ten tonight. You can meet my friends there.”

“Thank you so much,” Chan says, offering his best placating smile. All Jae does is grunt in reply. 

The conversation from there turns to lighter topics, as lunch is finally served and they return to the original purpose of Jae’s visit, but Seungmin can see the tension of words unsaid in the set of his shoulders and the lines of his jaw until he leaves. No one else mentions it, but the look on Jae’s face stays stuck in his head until he falls asleep that night. 

  
  


It turns out that starting a revolution is easier than anyone had expected. Seungmin had assumed the people of Miroh would be hesitant at best about the concept of fighting openly against the District, but they seem remarkably open to the idea. Miroh, it seems, is a packed powder keg of barely-repressed fury, needing only the barest spark of opportunity to blow the whole city sky-high. 

The market, as it always seems to be, ends up being the center of it all. While it makes sense that a group of people whose very livelihood depends on constant lawbreaking would be receptive to the idea of starting a coup, Seungmin hadn't been very optimistic, assuming they’d prioritize their safety and security above all else. 

Most of the ten or so people in the meeting room are shopkeepers, many of whom Seungmin has exchanged passing greetings with before, but several of them are entirely new faces. It’s a little scary to know absolutely no one except for Jae, but if these people really are his friends, he trusts they’ll be accepting enough. 

The eight of them stand at the front of the room, Chan at their head, and explain their plan. Their leader does most of the talking, but Minho, Jeongin, and Seungmin chime in wherever necessary. 

At first their audience looks decidedly unimpressed, and Seungmin starts to get a sinking feeling that they might be wasting their time here. Maybe Hyunjin should be the one arguing their case- he’s by far the most passionate supporter of their mission. 

Once they finish, there’s a long moment of exceedingly awkward silence wherein Unit Nine stands very still and tries not to look as uncomfortable as they feel. Jae’s friends watch them contemplatively, expressions unreadable, until-

“If you’re looking for someone to shoot cops, I’m your man,” someone calls from the corner, grin wide and expression eager. 

“Bull _shit,_ Matthew,” a blonde woman jeers across the room before Unit Nine can so much as open their mouths. “You couldn’t shoot a cop if one had a head to your gun barrel.”   
  
“You’re one to talk,” he shoots right back good-naturedly. “I’ve never seen you hit a shot in your life.”   
  
“But I’ve punched out three more cops than you have,” she sings, holding up the appropriate number of fingers.   
  
Seungmin stares at her in shock. “How are you still alive?” He asks before he can stop himself. Even Hyunjin and Jisung stick to the shadows on their midnight excursions, careful to avoid even the slightest detection by the District.   
  
“Be quiet, cover your face and take the back streets home,” she answers easily, as if explaining a topic even toddlers understand. Maybe they do in Miroh. 

“Does this mean you’re willing to help us?” Hyunjin asks, poorly repressed excitement in his voice. 

A pause, as a few of them exchange meaningful glances. 

“I’m in,” says a man with a sharp chin and sharper eyes, jaw firmly set. 

Matthew flashes them a peace sign. “You already know I’m in.”

“Oh, what the hell,” a woman with short, silvery hair whispers to herself. “I’ll help too.”

Everyone else adds their assent, even Jae, and Seungmin can’t help but smile along with his teammates at the realization of yet another part of their plan. 

Next comes introductions. The people Seungmin didn’t recognize are named Wonpil, Sungjin, and Dowoon; they’ve apparently known Jae since before he became a shopkeeper. The blonde woman who’d made fun of Matthew earlier is Jamie, and the dagger-sharp grin on her lips as she introduces herself is equal parts intimidating and an encouraging sign that these people might be just what they’re looking for. The silver-haired woman, Ashley, works at one of the food stalls, and the man next to her, Peniel, claims to sell “a little bit of everything” at his own shop. They’re all nice enough, with an impressive level of energy and enthusiastic hatred towards the District, so it doesn’t take long for Seungmin and his husbands to feel right at home. 

  
“So you’re soldiers,” Ashley remarks with interest, as they all sit together in a loose circle of chairs. “Oh- ex-soldiers, I mean.”

“We are,” Chan says slowly, offering an uncomfortable nod. They don’t tell people about their past often, knowing full well most of Miroh’s populace wouldn’t take the news well, but honestly seemed like the best policy for a meeting this important. 

“I had a friend who said he saw a solider once,” Peniel cuts in cheerfully. “He said he had red eyes and killed a guy just by punching him, though, so I think he was bullshitting.” 

Knowing what he knows about District soldiers, he might not have been, but Seungmin certainly isn’t going to mention that. No point in scaring anyone unnecessarily. 

“You must really hate the District, then,” Ashley says. 

“We do,” Changbin tells her, eyes dark. 

“Welcome to the club, then,” Jamie says dryly. “You’ll fit right in around here.”  
  
When the conversation eventually falls to business, Unit Nine is more than happy to let those with more experience speak, and their newfound allies have a wealth of knowledge to share. 

Rioting is an entirely different kind of warfare than what Seungmin is used to, with survival as its primary goal. _If you get gassed, pour water in your eyes. Never go anywhere without wearing a mask. Don’t do anything alone or unarmed._ Victory is determined by the number of people who come back alive rather than total eradication of the enemy. Combat for these people is just as scorched into the fiber of their beings as it is Seungmin's, but their sense of it is built from accomplishments and passion, of learning and growing from each lost fight and exalting even the smallest of victories.   
  
Maybe it’s because they care so much for what they’re fighting for.   
  
Combat for Seungmin has always been something done in desperation, any other straggling emotions shoved to the side and swallowed in apathy as he lets his conditioning and muscle memory do its work to keep him alive. There is no pride, no bragging rights gained in being allowed to survive for another day. He’s never had a cause he’s chosen to fight for, something he believes in with every fiber of his being without it being force-fed to him.   
  
It would be an honor to fight by the sides of these people, Seungmin decides.   
  
They’ve accepted his unit with open arms, seemingly more than willing to overlook their pasts in favor of their visceral hatred of the District. Maybe they just want to cause some chaos, but that’s really all Unit Nine needs- they’ll take care of the rest. 

In short, they’re going to split into three groups in different parts of the main street of the parade, and once Park starts talking someone will punch a cop. Their new teammates have assured them nothing else will need to be done to kick things off- apparently few people in Miroh can resist fighting cops when the opportunity arises.   
  
While the atmosphere is generally one of positivity and overwhelming eagerness, there is one person who’s clearly less enthusiastic than the rest of them. Jae is generally much more pessimistic about their chances than anyone else; Seungmin suspects it’s a natural sort of defeatism beaten into him through living an entire life spent in Miroh. Unit Nine, however, has never tasted any strong sort of failure in their two years of being soldiers, a testament to either their unmatched skill or a truly incredible streak of luck. It’s alright- they’ll just have to prove Jae wrong, especially since he’s been kind enough to agree to help them out anyway.

Since Unit Nine has come up with most of the assassination plan already, the bulk of their discussions ends up being about contingency plans. If something goes wrong, they’re all going to have flare guns, which will act as a signal for everyone to escape as quickly as possible. 

“If they bring in soldiers, what do we do?” Jamie asks the room at large. “I know you-” she gestures to Unit Nine- “said you’ll have Park’s security detail covered, but what if there’s more?”

“We rush them, I guess,” Wonpil answers, albeit uncertainly. 

“That won’t work,” Seungmin is speaking before he consciously registers opening his mouth. “If they bring in actual soldiers, they’ll be armed to the teeth. Just attacking them won’t be enough; your best bet would be-” he abruptly stops, realizing just what he’d been about to suggest with a sickening lurch of his stomach. 

“Separating them from their unit,” Chan finishes, expression perfectly blank in a way only his unit would understand expresses his deep discomfort at the topic. “And soldiers always wear earpieces out in the field. If you can disrupt their signal, they’ll lose contact with their unit leader. They’ll be much less effective on their own.”

“Woah,” Peniel murmurs, wide-eyed. “That’s really smart.”

“You guys are so helpful to have around,” Jamie grins, and though Seungmin nods politely at the compliment, he feels nothing but nausea roiling in his stomach. He tries to pretend that couldn’t all-too-easily have been him once, separated from his unit and unceremoniously killed, and doesn’t quite manage it. 

Chan’s hand finds his, and he squeezes it so tightly his knuckles turn white. 

The next couple of weeks fly by in a blur of planning and increasingly euphoric evening chats on the trampoline. Sometimes, when the high of anticipation and success seeps too deeply into their bones, they use it for things that are decidedly not sleeping, and somehow, despite the increasingly obvious hickies on his husband’s necks, the rest of their team doesn’t call them on it. He’s sure they notice, if the looks they exchange are any indication, but everyone in Miroh is a professional at staying in their lane and minding their business when a situation calls for it. Even if they were to tease them, it would do nothing to dampen Seungmin’s spirits. 

For the first time in his life, Seungmin is looking forward to a mission, and the feeling has never been sweeter. 

  
  


Sometimes owning an entire building has its perks- namely, they have more than enough space to host as many people as they want. While even the entirety of their team isn’t anywhere near the building’s max capacity, it’s still far more guests than they’ve ever had at once. 

Everyone’s brought a dish to share, be it homemade fare or takeout, and the result is a cacophony of smells and sights as people spread out and mingle across the entirety of their first floor. Tomorrow is Founding Day, and since no one is quite optimistic enough to believe they’ll be able to commemorate their success immediately after the assassination, they’ve decided to hold a celebration of sorts beforehand. 

The party is in full swing, everyone talking and laughing like there’s no tomorrow, and Seungmin has spent most of it thus far curled up next to Hyunjin on one of their couches, people-watching and chatting with his husband about anything that comes to mind. 

When he gets up to grab them both some of the cheap wine Peniel donated, however, someone smacks a fork against a glass to garner everyone’s attention. The resulting sound is less a delicate ring and more a shrill _clank_ , but it succeeds in its aim regardless. 

“We need to do a toast,” Jamie proclaims, hooping up onto a chair and waving her drink around fearlessly. “To our hosts, first of all. Thank you, former soldier boys, both for having us and for what you’re about to do. If this works, you can shop free at the market for life.”

The cheer that rises up from the room is so loud it shakes the walls, and Seungmin is met with half a dozen smiles almost instantly. He grins right back with equal intensity, the electric exuberance of the evening settling into his bones and leaving him feeling light and tipsy with euphoria. 

“And of course, thanks to our wonderful, best-ever head merchant,” Jamie calls, tipping her drink in the direction of a lazily grinning Jae.

“-And in memory of our favorite,” Matthew finishes, in the way one might recite a famous quote. Another uproarious cheer follows. 

Seungmin has no idea what they’re talking about, but since he’s right next to Sungjin, who he’s talked to a few times and likes well enough, he feels comfortable enough to murmur the question to him as the toast finishes up. 

“His name is Eric,” Sungjin says after they clink their glasses together and drink. “He was head merchant before Jae, and he was one of the people who won us the market in the first place.”

“Is he-” Seungmin begins, distraught. 

“Oh, no,” Sungjin waves a hand. “He’s not dead. Well, we don’t think so, anyway. He’s been in prison for treason for about three years now.”

“We like to toast to him whenever we can,” Dowoon adds, materializing behind Sungjin’s shoulder. “Dead or not, it’s good to keep his memory alive.”

Seungmin hums in vague agreement and looks away, something dark and sad roiling in his stomach. Loss seems to blanket everything in Miroh, a fog so omnipresent everyone’s learned how to see right through it. Somehow his unit, despite having known nothing but combat for the vast majority of their lives, are the only people who still remember what clear skies feel like. 

He ends up next to Jae by accident, simply gravitating to the closest empty seat, and the two of them sit in silence for a while, observing the festivities. 

“It seems like everybody here has lost someone to the District,” Seungmin comments, the words coming out far more somber than he’d intended. For an evening meant to be a celebration, he’s managed to have some truly depressing conversations.

“Well, you know what they say,” Jae answers. “Either you’ve lost someone or you’re someone’s lost one.”

While Seungmin knows he’s lucky beyond belief to have never borne the weight of permanent loss, the constant discussion of death makes his throat feel tight and brings a lead-weighted lump of anxiety to his stomach all the same. He can imagine all-too-easily what it would be like if he had to live through grief of his own, and the thought is far from a pretty one. “Oh.”

“I’m lucky, I guess,” Jae hums. “Surviving this long. I learned young not to trust the government, and the older I get the more I hate them.” 

Seungmin still sometimes has to fight the dregs of faint District propaganda trapped in his brain from popping up, persistent and intrusive. The concept of people living their whole lives within Clé, knowing full well of the government’s incessant cruelty yet simply tolerating it, is something he can’t quite wrap his head around. 

The only thing stopping him from walking into the Presidential Manor and killing the president tonight is the thought of losing his teammates and shattering the delicate, fledgling peace they’ve made for themselves. If he had the resources and knowledge of someone like Jae, who’s lived in Miroh his whole life and is friends with what feels like half the city, he’d have started a revolution a long time ago. Hell, Seungmin literally _is_ starting a revolution despite his prior circumstances. Sitting idly by and watching people suffer, especially people he cares about, has always been antithetical to Seungmin’s barest instincts. 

“Doesn’t it bother you?” He asks, tries to keep his tone light and curious so as not to come across as condescending. “What the District does to people? How do you ignore it?” 

Jae’s mouth twists in discomfort at the question, but he meets Seungmin’s eyes calmly all the same. “Self-preservation, mostly. What am I gonna do about it? Go out and protest for ten minutes before I’m shot by the nearest cop?” 

“Everyone helps everyone around here as best we can,” he continues. “We can’t bring down the government by ourselves, but we can keep each other alive, you know?” 

Seungmin hums in understanding. “And you do much more than your fair share of helping.”

Jae lets out a pleased laugh at that, running a hand through his hair. “I try my best.”

“Really,” Seungmin tells him, gratitude shining in his voice. “You’re the main reason we’ve managed to survive here. Without your help, I don’t know what we would’ve done.” Likely lived in their bus forever, in a perpetual state of fear and uncertainty. Not the most preferential of outcomes. 

“Minnie, love,” Felix calls from across the room, voice sonorous and loud yet dripping with sweetness, “Innie wants you to discuss some last minute stuff with him upstairs.”

“Coming!” Seungmin shouts right back, and smiles apologetically at Jae. “I’ve gotta-”

He waves a hand understandingly. “Of course.”

“Take care of them, okay?” Jae says quietly. “You won’t realize just how much they mean to you until you lose them.”

Seungmin isn’t sure he could adore his unit any more than he already does, but he gets Jae’s point all the same. “I will,” he swears.

“Good luck,” Jae tells him, and despite the grin on his lips, it doesn’t seem very encouraging. 

The look in his eyes sticks in the forefront of Seungmin’s mind the whole way up the stairs, but the sight that greets him when he reaches the landing is enough to immediately push it away. 

Felix has somehow beaten him upstairs, and he’s pressed into the edge of the couch next to Jeongin like he wants it to swallow him up. He’s never been good at hiding his emotions, and now is no exception; the stress and worry on his face is clear as day. 

“Lix? Are you okay?” Seungmin asks immediately, darting across the room to sit down next to him. Jeongin already has an arm wrapped around his shoulders, so Seungmin moves to rest a comforting hand on his thigh. 

“I don’t-“ Felix looks nervous, conflicted. “I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing here. I don’t want anyone to die because of us.” 

“What do you mean?” Seungmin asks carefully. Felix had never shown the slightest sign of hesitance toward their plan before now; how long has he been sitting on these feelings? The thought makes something unpleasant twist in his stomach- Felix should never feel like he has to hide anything from them. 

Felix pauses for a moment to think. “It was fine when it was just the eight of us, but now that there’s so many civilians involved, I just-” he breaks off, and Jeongin lets his head drop onto his husband’s shoulder. Felix visibly relaxes at the contact, much to Seungmin’s relief. 

“We’re doing this to help people,” he continues softly. “But if we let them die, we’re accomplishing the opposite.”  
  
“We’re being as careful as we can be,” Seungmin reassures him gently. “And half of the people doing this are better at fighting than we are.”

“Plus, everyone here agreed to do this,” Jeongin adds. “We didn’t coerce them into anything. They really believe that we can kill Park.”

“I know,” Felix whispers. “But what if we can’t?” He sounds almost ashamed of the admission, as if it’s somehow wrong to worry about their chances of success on a mission like this, and it breaks Seungmin’s heart. Felix has always been too good for the world, too focused on what everyone else wants even at his own expense. 

Jeongin shakes his head. “Don’t think like that. Convincing yourself something’s gonna go wrong will only make it happen.”

“We’re gonna do this,” Seungmin says firmly, as if he can speak their victory into being through sheer willpower alone. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Felix echoes, and the soft smile on his face glows like the rising sun. 

  
  


Founding Day dawns clear but cold, a harsh, icy wind whistling through the streets of Miroh and cancelling out any warmth the sunlight could possibly provide. Despite the unseasonably frosty temperatures, crowds of revelers still line the sidewalks and spill out into the streets, exchanging expressions of goodwill and sharing street food from tiny corner stands. 

Seungmin has never seen so many people in one place at once, and the sight of it all is dizzying. Many people are carrying tiny Cléan flags with them or tucked into their clothes, their scarlet fabric with the imprinted face of a lion in the center bloodying the otherwise vibrant crowd.

While the holiday is meant to honor the government and its innumerable successes, most people seem to be using it to simply spend time together without the pressure of work and fear of authorities hanging over their heads. Half of the parade crowd is barely watching the spectacle, instead choosing to sip hot drinks and chat with those around them like it’s any other day on Miroh’s streets. 

The performers are of course doing their best to make the parade a grand affair, but it’s clear by the uncanny perfection of their movements that their effort is borne not of passion but instead fear of punishment. The marching band making their way down the streets is playing the national anthem on repeat, and those twirling flags or dancing are all dressed in military-style costumes and waving banners emblazoned with government slogans. It’s- patriotic, to say the least, but no one who isn’t required to be there is feeling any of the patriotism Founding Day is all about. Seungmin himself feels little more than a vague sense of disgust and pity as he watches the spectacle.

The police are also a deeply disconcerting presence, stationed every few meters along the street and standing statue-still. Their eyes stare blankly forward, not so much as twitching beyond the occasional blink, and something about them makes a chill run down Seungmin’s spine every time he looks at one too closely. 

At least he won’t have to be out here for long. Slipping his way through the throng of people as fluidly as he can, he dodges elbows and wandering children and offers murmured _excuse me_ s between every breath as he heads towards his destination. 

A thick, near-tangible sort of tension hangs in the air, but the nervous energy filling Seungmin up from bottom to top makes him feel light and powerful instead of anxious. There’s a certain euphoria to this, to going on a proper mission with his team again, and they’re going to kill the _President._ Talk about poetic justice. Finally, _finally,_ they’ll get to be safe and free, and this time it’ll be permanent. 

There’s only a handful of people milling about the Communications Center, and Seungmin bypasses half of them simply by walking with his back straight and his head held high, soldier-perfect posture still natural to him even now. All of them look positively exhausted, likely having been up all night to prepare for today’s broadcast, and he doubts they’d bother to stop him even if he walked into the building with an assault rifle strapped to his back. 

Jeongin determined the computer Seungmin needs to be using is on the fifth floor, and he punches the appropriate button on the elevator with a hand covered by his jacket sleeve. 

“I’m in,” he whispers, head ducked low to hide him from any potential cameras. He has a disruptor in his pocket, but using it now might draw unnecessary attention. If anyone looks at the camera feeds at the wrong time, the whole mission might go south very quickly, and that’s the last thing Seungmin wants- he’s not sure he’d ever forgive himself if he did anything to damage their chances of success. 

“Good,” Jeongin murmurs in his ear a moment later. “There might be people in the broadcast room, so be careful.”

Seungmin hums his assent as the elevator dings, announcing his arrival to the fifth floor. The broadcast is easy to find, clearly labeled at the end of the hallway, its door left unlocked as if to invite Seungmin in. One hand hovering over the door control, he activates the disruptor with the other and waits anxiously, straining to hear any approaching footsteps. Once he counts to thirty, he slams the button with an unnecessary amount of force and slips through the door the second it cracks open, shutting it behind him the second he’s over the threshold. 

There’s one person in the broadcast room, a middle-aged man nearly falling asleep where he sits. At the sound of the door opening he jerks awake, looking so dazed and exhausted Seungmin almost feels bad for him. 

“Who are yo-” the man begins, but Seungmin doesn’t let him get any further before he’s striding forward and kicking him out of his chair. 

He knocks him unconscious with a well-placed elbow to the temple and heaves his body into a corner, tying his wrists together with a nearby extension cord. Shutting the door’s electronic lock, Seungmin makes his way over to the now-vacant desk chair in front of the computers and settles into it. Dozens of screens hang in the air in front of him, each featuring a different angle of the parade crowds and the vacant podium for President Park’s speech. 

He sticks an unassuming black flash drive into the first computer port he sees, hoping that’s all he needs to do to get Jeongin into the Communication Center’s system. “I put the drive in,” he tells Jeongin, tapping it once to make sure it’s all the way inside of the port. 

“Perfect, I’m in,” Jeongin says. “Let me know if anything comes up.”

“Will do,” Seungmin replies, and sets about watching the parade. 

It’s strange to be able to see so much of Miroh at once, to watch thousands of people milling about like colorful ants beneath him. Try as he might, he sees no trace of his unit nor any of their fellow insurgents, which is equal parts comforting and terrifying. The parade crowd has by now swelled to cover what seems like miles, a mess of color and movement, overwhelming even on the silent screen he’s staring at. 

“Okay,” Chan speaks, and Seungmin snaps back to reality. “Park’s getting out of his limo. Is everyone in position?”

“The live feed is online and cameras are on the crowd,” Seungmin reports. Since President Park hasn’t started speaking just yet, no one’s going to wonder why there’s no focus on him, which is exactly what they want. No one in charge can realize anything is amiss until it’s too late to do anything about it. 

“We’re in position here,” Jisung adds, and Changbin chimes in with his own confirmation right after.

“Can we start punching cops yet?” Hyunjin asks eagerly. 

“Minho, are you ready?” Chan says in lieu of an answer.

A pause follows as everyone waits for his response. “Yes,” Minho replies after a moment. “He’s in my sights. Jinnie, you can start punching cops whenever Chan says so.” 

“I’m going to split comms now,” Jeongin informs them all. 

“Good luck, everyone,” Chan says formally, affection dripping from his words all the same. 

“I love you guys,” Jisung sings. 

“Love you too,” Seungmin replies, tries not to make the words sound like any sort of a goodbye. They’ll be seeing each other again soon enough. 

One of the camera drones shifts closer to President Park’s face as he ascends to the podium, and Seungmin glances at it curiously. He looks as plastic as ever, eyes gleaming and insect-like as they sweep over the crowd. A self-satisfied smirk carves its way into his lips and Seungmin shivers involuntarily. 

It takes about five minutes for the fireworks to start. President Park’s speech is entirely eventful, meaningless words wrapped up in the guise of ceremony and eloquence, and Seungmin tunes him out easily. The first sign that anything is amiss comes when the crowd almost at the edge of the parade street seems to ripple, a flurry of movement taking place. Seungmin presses the buttons Jeongin told him to and brings one of the cameras to focus on that part of the crowd, broadcasting it for everyone in Clé to see. 

Something explodes in the street, and the sound of screams floats upwards alongside thick white smoke. _Tear gas,_ Seungmin guesses- he doubts they’re using live grenades already. Like a massive school of fish, the crowd collapses in on itself and shrinks away from the toxic cloud of gas, shifting upwind of the fumes as quickly as possible. 

Seungmin winces, desperately wishing he could check in on his teammates. Splitting comms was a horrible decision, if only because he’ll be living in a constant state of terror until everything is over. 

Despite him being in a position of relative safety, for all intents and purposes Seungmin’s body is entirely prepared for a fight, white-hot fury and adrenaline flooding his veins until he’s practically shaking with unreleased energy. With every new moment of violence he sees the rush only hits harder until he’s achingly desperate to do _something, anything_ to help his team in their fight. 

His wish is granted almost instantly when his screens promptly pop off, the sudden darkness in the broadcast room almost dizzying. “Jeongin,” he asks in surprise, wondering if something’s happened to him. “Did you cut the cameras?”

“Wha- no? _Fuck,”_ Jeongin mutters to himself. To Seungmin, he replies with a quick, “Give me a second, I’ll fix it.” 

The signal has been cut from another building, likely some other part of the government’s media arm, but Jeongin overrides it easily enough. They’re not expecting any sort of pushback, so Seungmin is back to panning his camera across the steadily-growing riot in under a minute. He makes sure to cover as much of the police brutality as he can despite the twisting in his gut and the way his heart clenches in fury at every new horror he sees.

President Park is still talking. Seungmin has no choice but to listen, his speech by far the loudest audio being recorded, and the juxtaposition between the president’s calm, self-satisfied words and the simultaneous feed of innocent people being gassed and attacked simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time makes him sick to his stomach. 

“Yet another year of peace and prosperity has uplifted us all,” President Park drones on, and Seungmin wants nothing more than to punch him. Even the knowledge that his life will imminently be ending still isn’t enough to ease the all-consuming hatred he feels every time he looks at Park’s awful, plastic face. 

Someone hisses a _fuck_ over the main comm channel, the group one they’d set up only for emergencies, and Seungmin snaps back to reality instantly. “Something happened, fuck-” Felix begins, only to cut himself off as someone screams in the background and the unmistakable sound of a gun firing follows. “Get everyone else on.”

“What’s wrong?” Jeongin asks immediately, attentive but voice perfectly controlled. “I’m connecting everyone else, hang on.” 

A momentary buzz of static follows as their separate comm channels are reconnected into one, and despite the edge of icy fear piercing Seungmin’s gut, something deep within him relaxes at the temporary reunion with his teammates. 

“It’s Jae,” Felix says, voice tight as a wire. “The police got him. I didn’t see where he went- they just hit him over the head and and-” he breaks off, and there comes a shuddery inhale over the comms. 

“Is he dead?” Changbin asks tersely. 

“No.” Felix sounds equal parts certain and desperate. “They’d have killed him straight off if they wanted him dead, and they didn’t.”

The tension in Seungmin’s shoulders fractionally evaporates. None of this is going according to plan, but it’s fine, it’s fine, _it’s fine_ \- once Park is dead they can just bust Jae out. No harm done. 

“Minho, you need to shoot _now,”_ Chan commands, cutting into the conversation for the first time. He sounds tense, exhausted, like he’s fresh out of a fight. Maybe he is. Seungmin hates that he has no idea. 

A deeply disconcerting silence comes from Minho’s end of the comm, broken only by the faint buzzing of the empty channel. 

“Minho,” Chan repeats. “Minho, do you copy?” 

Still nothing. 

“His connection is fine,” Jeongin informs them, voice tight with confused frustration. “He’s just not answering.”

Something has to be wrong. Following mission protocol is as natural as breathing for Minho; he’d _never_ ignore them on comms or disconnect them unless something had gone horrifically awry. 

“We can’t get anyone up there to check on him,” Changbin realizes aloud, barely-controlled terror leaking into his tone. “We just have to trust he’ll do it.”

Sitting here, far away from his teammates and condemned to do nothing but spectate the chaos, Seungmin has never felt so useless. If he had any hope of making it in time, he’d already be on his way to the building Minho is holed up in. He feels like every nerve of his body is on fire, like his veins are wrapped around his bones tight enough to snap. 

“Everyone, be ready to run,” Chan orders. “If I give the signal, shoot your flares and get off the streets any way you have to. 

“Park’s moving,” Hyunjin calls urgently, voice distant and slightly staticky. “He’s almost to the stairs, he’s gonna get evacuated any second now- Minho has to shoot.” 

_Come on, Minho,_ Seungmin mentally pleads, hands clenched so tightly together his nails are surely drawing blood. President Park is walking slowly, trying his best to maintain an unruffled air, but it won’t take him more than ten seconds to escape all the same. They can’t let him live, not after all this; Minho has to know that. No matter what’s wrong, he won’t let them down. 

There’s a moment where time itself seems to still, tense and electric like the instant between lightning and thunder. Then, finally, as Seungmin watches, eyes wide and body rigid, there comes a muted _bang_ from the distance, an instant where the bullet arcs through the air-

And as he stares unblinkingly at the camera feed, heart in his throat, the shot _misses_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops!
> 
> Come yell at me in the comments! If you beg me to update soon, I just might ;)
> 
> [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/CelSilences)  
> [ CuriousCat ](https://curiouscat.me/CelestialSilences)  
> [Ko-fi ](https://Ko-fi.com/celsilences)


	5. Quick Update (Not a Chapter, Sorry)!

Hi everyone!!

I'm so sorry this isn't an update, but I just wanted to inform y'all that Antumbra and this fic have been officially updated to be ot8, unless I missed something somewhere. If you find a mistake, please let me know!! I'll fix it immediately. The next update might take a little longer than I expected now, as I'll have to adjust the plot a bit from what I had planned, but I have no intention of abandoning this fic and I hope you'll all stick with it too <3

Take care of yourselves, everyone!! Eight is fate and don't forget to stream Back Door!

-Cel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/CelSilences)   
>  [ CuriousCat ](https://curiouscat.me/CelestialSilences)


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